


Blood Magic

by blackat_t7t



Series: Family Matters [2]
Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Half-Sibling Incest, M/M, mostly teen-rated; sex in last chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-06-08 11:59:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 122,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6853744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackat_t7t/pseuds/blackat_t7t
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Professional wizard Harry Dresden thought his life was complicated when all he had to worry about was hiding his less-than-platonic feelings for his half-brother, Thomas. Then he gets a call from a Warden of the White Council: a warlock is coming to Chicago to work a spell powered by human sacrifice, and it falls to Harry to stop it. To make matters worse, Detective Murphy of Chicago PD wants his help on a theft that seems to have been committed with magic. Harry is sure the two cases are somehow linked, and he, Thomas, and Murphy will have to work fast to uncover the connection in time to stop the warlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic should be read after [Chance Meetings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6491329), which was written as a prologue to Blood Magic. It's set about 2 years after Chance Meetings, between Dead Beat and Proven Guilty.
> 
> The fic is completely written, and I will upload chapters as I edit them.
> 
> If you enjoy this fic, please consider sharing it on Tumblr by reblogging [this post](http://blackat-t7t.tumblr.com/post/146529560060/blood-magic-complete).

I stepped out of my bedroom and immediately knew it was going to be one of those days. The kind where I spend most of it barely keeping my head on straight through the lust and the guilt and the sheer annoyance that all instead of coming to a head somehow melts down into a hapless affection at the end of the day.

Thomas had come home sometime after I had gone to bed (he’s a big boy so I don’t wait up for him, though I never sleep easy when I don’t know where he’s at) and he’d brought with him another one of his ‘dates,’ if that word can be applied to a one-night-stand. The clothes this one had left on my floor looked too classy for her to be called anything less. She was a young woman with a heart-shaped face rendered angelic by the halo of tousled blonde hair spread out around her head, though the image was slightly tarnished by the line of hickies running down her neck. She was lying on my couch wrapped in a blanket and nothing more, and her head was resting on Thomas’s shoulder.

My brother was in a similar state, his black hair disheveled and lipstick smeared down the side of his neck and at the corner of his mouth. The arm his date was lying across had been thrown out straight rather than wrapped around her- even asleep, he wasn’t one for physical affection. But sleep had been able to smooth the pride and care from his features, gorgeous on the worst of days, and it had left behind a near-godlike perfection. He had apparently lost the struggle over the blankets, because miles of porcelain skin and sculpted muscle were on display for anyone who might happen to wander by, and the only corner of fabric covering him wasn’t doing much to preserve his modesty.

Yikes.

I ducked back into my bedroom and made for the adjoining bath, intent on claiming the only shower before either of them could wake and demand the privilege. I stepped in and turned the water on cold. There wasn’t any other temperature to be had, since I’d stopped trying to keep a working water heater in the apartment years ago, but after that kind of start to my day I wanted the extra guarantee of icy water.

It wasn’t about the girl. I wish I could say it was, but with due respect to her comeliness, she was no White Court vampire. And even your average White Court vamp couldn’t get the kind of reaction out of me that Thomas could.

I’d been attracted to Thomas from the moment I met him, though I had made an effort to keep it under wraps. You don’t go telling sex vampires that you’re into them; not if you want your mind to remain under your own control for very long. Thomas was a predator by nature, and a predator that had shown unusually high levels of interest in me. Between that and his family’s at least outwardly civil relations with the Red Court vampires I’d kicked off a war against, I’d been determined to keep him at arm’s length out of suspicion if nothing else.

In spite of all of that, he’d managed to endear himself to me as an ally and tentative friend. He’d saved my life several times- even when it couldn’t have gotten him anything except maybe dead. And as suspicious as I was about his motives, I’d found that it was spectacularly hard to mistrust someone after they’d had your back in the heat of battle. We had even shared a kiss, once, as part of a desperate bid to get out of a life-or-death situation when I couldn’t make use of my magic and Thomas needed to feed. The White Court’s method of feeding involves a mixing and mingling of power and can leave a psychic link if done enough times, so it wasn’t something I’d wanted to do with someone I wasn’t sure I could trust, but like I said, we were desperate. It had been hands down the most earth-shattering kiss of my entire life.

And have I mentioned he’s my brother?

Well, half-brother. Before my mother married Malcolm Dresden, professional stage magician, she had been married to Lord Raith, King of the White Court of Vampires. I’d learned that almost two years ago, after I’d made it a condition of doing him a favor that Thomas tell me why he’d been helping me. The same favor had ended with a change in power within the White Court and Thomas out on his ass, hence why he was sleeping on my couch.

I wish I could say it had changed the way I felt about him.

Of course, it had, in a lot of ways. I now felt totally confident trusting him with my all, and accordingly I had let him in on a dozen different secrets that would have meant my life if certain people found out. He’d returned my trust by dropping the multi-layered act he’d cultivated in order to keep himself safe within the White Court- including the part of the act that had been designed to win me over (because I didn’t doubt for a minute that the way he’d behaved toward me before then had been a seduction of one form or another). He was no longer a mysterious, brooding, and potentially hostile tentative ally; instead he was a likable if irritating roommate who could never manage to clean up after himself and admittedly did still tend to brood a bit.

As much as things had changed between us, a lot of things had also stayed the same. Like the ones that had drawn me to him in the first place. He was still good in a fight, still made me laugh, still loved to exchange good-natured barbs, still had a razor-sharp smirk that made me want to lick it off his mouth and-

Well.

That was the problem, really. Some things that should have changed hadn’t, namely my attraction to him. He was my brother, my only blood family since I’d been orphaned at seven years old. A family I’d been longing for ever since, with a child’s desperation that time had turned into a bone-deep ache. It should have been enough for me.

It wasn’t.

And that was where the lust, guilt, and annoyance came in. Maybe it would have been easier to push the indecent thoughts from my mind if Thomas wasn’t bringing home a different girl every night and giving me an eyeful every morning. I couldn’t actually begrudge him his different partners, though. He was White Court; he needed sex, literally needed it to stay alive. He’d explained it to me once, what living with the Hunger felt like. I didn’t think I could have coped with it half as well as he had. I knew that spreading his nibbling around and not feeding on the same person twice was for their safety rather than his convenience, so I held my tongue and suffered in silence.

And I do mean suffered. If you’ve never lived with a freaking sex god who walks around shirtless and screws literally everyone except for you, you can’t know how maddening it is. If you have, you’ve got my sympathies. We should compare notes some time.

I’d once tried to list out all the reasons I needed to get over him. I gotten up to two hundred and fifty-four, neatly sorted into sub-groups like “why it’s wrong,” “how other people would react,” “why he won’t feel the same,” and “why it won’t work out even if he did.” It hadn’t changed anything, though. My libido doesn’t respond well to logic.

Thomas was my brother. I didn’t know exactly what passed for familial relations within the White Court, but the little I’d heard from Thomas hadn’t been anything pleasant. The White King had killed all of his male children before Thomas, and fed upon his own daughters to gain control over them, until my mother put a stop to it with her death curse. Thomas’s upbringing had been twisted, to say the least, and I think he had longed for a normal, loving family. People who didn’t manipulate each other, keep secrets from each other. People who didn’t use sex appeal -or even actual sex- to influence everyone, including their own kin. And when he had found me, he’d hoped to have a chance at that.

Thomas was trying, really trying, in spite of his upbringing to have a normal, healthy fraternal relationship with me, as much as he could given that we hadn’t grown up together. I was the one creating a problem with my gruesome, unwanted desires.

Thomas had tried to get a job, for the first year he’d lived with me. He could never hold one down for more than a couple weeks without someone –his boss, a co-worker, a customer- literally throwing themselves at him. Granted, he did need sex to survive, so having no lack of willing partners was convenient in its way, but Thomas didn’t get a choice in how he affected people. It might be an ego boost to catch people’s eyes, but I’d imagine having every single person you come across look at you like a piece of meat gets old fast. Especially when they start to sexually assault you.

Mine was just one more unwanted sexual gaze, made all the worse by the fact that we were brothers. It was ironic, in a way. He was the incubus from a family without sexual boundaries, and I was the one whose depraved desire might as well have been mental rape.

Thomas deserved a better brother than me.

The worst part was that if he found out, instead of being disgusted with me I knew he would blame himself. He would blame what he was, something he couldn’t control, for corrupting me. He would think that it was because of that one kiss we’d shared, the one he hadn’t wanted to have but I had demanded; that it had given him some sort of power over me and that he was the one guilty of mental rape.

Thomas already carried a lot of guilt over being what he was. No way in hell was I going to give him a reason to hate himself more.

I turned off the water and rested my head against the wall of the shower. I had to fight down the urge to slam my forehead against it, like that might somehow fix my thoughts. Now that the water had stopped, I could hear movement outside. Cabinets banged shut and a frying pan clanged down on my wood-burning stove. Thomas and his date were up, which meant that any minute now I would be ousted from the bathroom. No time to waste wallowing in self-pity, or self-disgust. I stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel.

Sure enough, a moment later there was a knock on the bathroom door. “Harry,” Thomas’s voice said.

“Out in a minute,” I replied.

“Someone’s on the phone for you. Should I have them call back?”

Well. That was unexpected.

My curiosity piqued, I opened the bathroom door, towel firmly wrapped around my waist. I had steeled myself mentally for the sight of Thomas in the nude, but he had thrown on the pair of pants I’d seen tossed over the back of my couch. I tried not to be disappointed. “Was it Murphy?” I asked, naming the police lieutenant whose consulting jobs kept my private investigator business above water.

 “It was a man,” Thomas said. “He’s on hold.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder towards the kitchen. My phone is an old rotary number with a wire connecting the handset to the base, so it can’t be carried around. Technology and wizards don’t get along so well, and the newer the tech the higher the chances it would break if it was around me for any length of time. I could short out a touch-screen cell at twenty paces, so I kept to old reliable, myself.

“Client?” I asked Thomas while I dug through my dresser for some clothes. Business had been going unusually well lately; I had even paid this month’s rent on time.

“He wouldn’t say,” Thomas replied. “He seemed surprised that someone else was answering your phone, though.”

“Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.” Thomas nodded and stepped out of the room to give me some privacy, closing the door behind him. I dropped my towel on the floor and started pulling on clothes.

When I came out of the room I found Thomas standing at my stovetop cooking bacon while my dog sat at his feet begging for scraps and his date leaned against the counter nearby and scratched the dog’s ears. She was still wrapped in the blanket, and she pulled it off really well. Mouse, the dog, looked over at me when I came in and then rose to his paws and came over, mouth open in a happy doggie grin. Thomas’s date followed him with her eyes and smiled when she saw me, then pushed herself away from the counter and went to lay a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “I’ll be in the shower.” She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “If you want to join me.”

I turned away and picked up the phone. Mouse shoved his head up under my other hand and I scratched his ears, even though it kind of ruined my sulking. The young woman strolled past me towards the bedroom, her blue eyes raking over me as she passed, the satisfied sway of her hips accentuated by the folds of my blanket. I judiciously ignored her. “This is Dresden; who’s calling?”

“Didn’t know you were into guys, Dresden,” a cheerful voice said. “Hope you didn’t get the wrong idea last Halloween; I know I’m terribly attractive, but I’m afraid I belong to the ladies.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Ramirez,” I answered. “He’s my roommate. But between the two of you, he wins in the looks department.” I glanced over at Thomas, who arched an eyebrow at me and smirked. I winked at him. It wasn’t the first time we’d been mistaken for a couple, and while I’d been rather horrified the last time Thomas had been highly amused. Since it didn’t seem to bother him I was trying to take it in better stride these days, but at the moment I was getting uncomfortably close to flirting. I turned away from Thomas, wrapping the telephone cord around my finger as I listened to Ramirez’ response.

“Lies,” he said, his tone no less cheerful than before. “Your vision must be going, Harry. Everyone knows I’m God’s gift to women.”

“And modest, too,” I said, glancing back at Thomas when I heard the rustle of kibble as he put out food for Mouse and Mister, my big gray tom. Kneeling down to fill the bowls did interesting things to the fit of his jeans on his hips, and I turned away again. Mouse left me to go get his breakfast. “What did you want, Carlos?”

The man on the other end of the line sobered immediately. “First I need your security code, Warden Dresden.” I gave it to him. Having Thomas listening in didn’t give me a moment’s pause. “We’ve been tracking a series of thefts,” Ramirez continued,” and it looks like the thief is headed to Chicago.”

“The wardens track thefts?” I asked, genuinely surprised. Hey, I was new to this whole warden business. Sue me.

The grey-cloaked wardens were like the police force of the White Council of Wizards, or its army. They enforced the Laws of Magic and fought against any creatures of the Nevernever that dared to prey on wizard-kind. They’d had it in for me since I was sixteen, and recently they’d been decimated in a war I had helped start. They had drafted me last fall to help fight a group of necromancers trying to turn themselves into gods, and since then I had been given a command post over the eastern US. Ramirez, who had fought with me against the necromancers, was in charge of the western US, which suited me just fine because he was one of the few wardens I could work with civilly.

“We do when they’re done with magic, or when they involve artifacts of significant power,” Ramirez told me. “This one’s both. The thief summons up some kind of monster from the Nevernever and uses it to pull a smash and grab, doesn’t worry too much about causing a scene. In spite of that, we’ve never actually managed to get a security picture of him, or even a reliable eye-witness statement. He stays in the shadows and lets his demon do the dirty work.”

“What kind of monster?” I asked, my private investigator instincts kicking in as I snatched up the notepad that lay by the phone and started jotting things down.

“We’ve only got the word of mortals, and you know how they can be, but it sounds like some kind of werewolf.”

I stopped writing mid-word. “Hexenwolf? Lycanthrope? Not a loup-garou,” I said, as much a horrified question as a statement. I’d faced one of those before, and it had nearly killed me. It had killed a lot of other people.

“No, _por suerte_ ,” Ramirez confirmed. “This thing is a lot smaller, almost man-shaped, furry, and it appears any time in the lunar cycle.” That didn’t sound like any werewolf I’d ever seen, but it did jog some kind of memory.

“I might know what you’re talking about,” I said, “but I don’t know its name.”

“If it ran into you and got away, it must be a bad-ass.”

“Hey, I dropped a building on it! This must be a different one.”

“That or you’re slipping.” I rolled my eyes while Ramirez chuckled.

“So what is it stealing that has the wardens’ panties in a knot?” I demanded.

“Careful; those are your panties too,” Ramirez pointed out, a smile evident in his voice. It disappeared in his next words. “Among other things, it’s been taking Mayan religious artifacts from museums. Once upon a time those artifacts were used in rituals of human sacrifice. We’re not quite sure what they add up to, but whatever it is, it’s big, and bad. They haven’t appeared on any black markets yet, so we have to assume our thief or whomever he’s working for plans to use them.”

“That is bad,” I muttered. Not that I’d been expecting something innocuous. The Wardens were charged with enforcing the seven Laws of Magic, which covered things like murder, mind control, and necromancy. They might take note of magical thefts, but they wouldn’t waste resources trying to stop them; especially not in the middle of a war. The only reason these thefts were getting attention now was because someone had put together enough puzzle pieces to realize that the big picture might be pretty bad.

“And you think he’s coming to Chicago next?”

“Right. That’s where the ‘among other things’ part comes in. In addition to the artifacts, the thief’s MO has been connected to a string of smaller robberies. Jewels, paintings, priceless family heirlooms, you know. Little things like that.”

“Things with no magical significance,” I supplied.

“Exactly. And some items that weren’t worth a lot but had a lot of emotional value to one party or another. So instead of a warlock doing his own supply shopping, we figure we’ve got the warlock and another rogue sorcerer working as a thief for hire.”

“The artifact thefts were all in big cities,” Ramirez continued. “New York, Dallas, San Diego, Orlando, Memphis- in that order. But over the past couple of days there have been several smaller thefts in cities along Interstate 57, headed up from Memphis to Chicago. We think the thief is headed there, and taking local jobs along the way. None of the other thefts have happened in the same area twice, so we think it means something.”

I pieced it together. “Something like that our thief has hooked up with our warlock and is traveling with him to Chicago for the big event.” Ramirez made a noise of agreement, and I sighed. “Of course it’s here. You know, with all the weird things that have been happening over the years, I’m starting to think Chicago was built on top of a Hellmouth.”

I heard Thomas snort as he slid some eggs onto a plate. Of course the vampire got the Buffy reference.

“If it’s vampires you want, we’ve got them worse in other places,” Ramirez said. Apparently he got it too. “But the trouble in your area is no joke, Dresden. There’s been a lot happening there, especially in the past few years. Some of the older wardens keep saying it’s only started since you’ve been there.”

“So some wardens think I’ve gone darkside,” I said bitterly. “Tell me something I don’t know. This is the thanks I get for trying to keep my city safe.”

“Hey, I’m just letting you know what’s up,” Ramirez said. I sighed. He was right. He was just trying to warn me; there was no reason to bite his head off for it.

“Yeah, I know. Thanks, ‘Los. Don’t worry about this one, okay? I’ll take care of Random Warlock #295.”

I heard a puff of static as he laughed. “Right. About that, we think he’s still got some more pieces to collect before it goes down. There’s not much distance between the last sighting and Chicago, so it’ll probably be in the city itself. I’m thinking private collection; nothing in the museums fits the same time period as the artifacts he’s taken so far.”

I groaned. Private collections often meant private homes, and private homes of the rich and locally-famous. Dealing with bystanders was bad enough; dealing with rich ones was just obnoxious. Besides that, there were dozens of people in Chicago wealthy enough to have unwittingly purchased a magic artifact. “Can you be more specific?”

“A Mr. Quintin Edwards recently acquired a piece from about the right time period,” Ramirez informed me, in a tone like he was reading from a report. “It’s a knife used in Mayan bloodletting ceremonies. Supposedly he’ll be donating it to the Field Museum at the next charity gala, but right now it’s in his private home.”

I scribbled down notes while Ramirez spoke. I’d heard the name before. Edwards was old money, from a family of steel magnates back during the industrial revolution. These days he mostly only made the news when he donated to some local charity. I’d seen him hobnobbing with John Marcone, the city’s biggest mob boss, a few years ago at an art auction put on by Marcone’s Chicago Historical and Art Society, which I was reasonably sure was a front for a smuggling operation. I’d had run-ins with Marcone before, and though I still regarded him as unmitigated scum, we had ended up on the same side of the chess board a few times. I wouldn’t invite him to Christmas dinner, but I might talk to him about his pal Edwards.

What was the world coming to, if a lowly private dick like me could call upon Chicago’s mob boss on a whim?

“Heard of him,” I told Ramirez. “I’ll watch the place. This thing likes to hit at night, right?”

“Early to mid-evening, never before six or after ten,” Ramirez confirmed. “Probably won’t be there until tomorrow night, either.”

“Got it.”

“And Harry,” he trailed off, hesitant. It wasn’t like him and I took notice, a nervous tension gathering in my shoulders. “There won’t be any help coming on this one,” Ramirez said at last. “None of the other wardens are taking this threat seriously; they can’t, won’t, spare anyone to help you if things go south.”

I frowned. “Even for something involving magic powered by human sacrifice?”

“They say there isn’t any proof that it would involve human sacrifice,” Ramirez muttered.

“A warlock’s stealing a Mayan bloodletting knife, and they don’t see human sacrifice? Bullshit.”

“Damn right,” he all but growled. “Dammit, man, everything I’ve been able to find about these artifacts says they’re some kind of massive power channel, and that they require blood sacrifice in order to work. But they were already taken by the time I started looking into them, so all I have to go on are pictures, documented histories, and folklore.”

“And the wardens don’t think it’s credible,” I supplied.

“I’ve tried to explain it to them,” Ramirez said, his tone bitter, “and I was told to focus on more urgent cases. We’ve got chatter on Red Court activity in Las Vegas, and there might be a warlock in Salt Lake City, and on top of that I’ve gotten reports of potentially gifted children going missing; it’s all a big mess.” He broke off with an explosive sigh.

“Harry,” Ramirez began again, hesitated for just for a moment, then confessed, “there is no ‘we’ on this. It’s just me. None of the other wardens have been watching this case; I pieced it together myself. My intel hasn’t been approved by the chain of command, so I’m not even supposed to be passing it on to you like this. But I know this is real. As real as last Halloween, and a lot of people might die if nobody stops it.”

I sighed. Frustrating as the situation was, it honestly tracked better than thinking that the wardens as a whole followed petty magical crimes and had pieced this plot together. Most of the wardens I’d encountered, members of the old guard, wouldn’t bother with anything less than a violation of one of the Seven Laws. But Ramirez was young, and even if he played the jaded veteran he still had some idealism left in him. He’d probably been tracking the thefts, the missing kids, and a dozen other cases like them.

If he was telling me off the record, he really couldn’t offer me any backup. It was even possible that he would get in trouble just for telling me, if it got back to the other wardens that he’d been keeping close tabs on our thief when he should have had all eyes on the vampire threat. He knew that, and he had come to me anyway, because the situation was desperate and there was no one else who would believe him and be willing and able to do something about it.

“Got it,” I said briskly. “I’m on my own, like always. Don’t sweat it, Carlos. I’ll handle it like I always do. Good work finding the pattern.”

“Yeah.” The word came out like a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Harry, I owe you one. Next time I’m in town, first round is on me.”

“I’ll hold you to it. See you, Ramirez.”

“Good luck, Dresden.” There was a click and a dial tone as he hung up the phone, and I put my handset back in the cradle and looked down at my notes.

“Trouble?” Thomas asked. He set a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast on the counter next to me and then leaned against the edge, watching me with concern in his grey eyes.

“When isn’t there?” I said, and snatched up a piece of bacon. I chewed it while I read over my notes and considered my conversation with Ramirez.

It was true enough that I’d had to deal with an unusually high number of warlocks (not really 295- that was just hyperbole), but that didn’t mean it had gotten any easier. The last time I thought a case had ended simply, my warlock had killed himself in prison and become a vengeful spirit that had threatened me and many of my allies- with disastrous consequences.

I shuddered at the memory of Mickie Malone, a good cop who had helped me take down the warlock, lying chained to his bed with his own cuffs, driven mad by a spell that had tortured his psyche with ice-cold barbed wire. I’d had to open my wizard’s Sight to see what was eating at him, and anything you see with the Sight remains fresh in your mind with perfect detail for years down the line.

Thomas bumped his shoulder against mine, and I looked over at him. He raised his eyebrows, asking without words if I was alright. I’d opened my mouth to answer when his date walked back in, wrapped in one of my towels which was really too small to be up to the job of covering her properly. I grabbed another piece of bacon and edged away, moving to the ice box to get myself a glass of orange juice.

“This was fun,” she told Thomas, her voice a little husky. “I’d say we should do it again, but-”

“But you’re not usually that type of girl, and you’re surprised it happened, really, but you don’t regret it and wish him all the best,” I suggested dryly, then bit my tongue before it could say anything else without checking in with my brain.

“Harry,” Thomas said, but his tone was more amused than admonishing.

“Well, no, that just about covers it,” his date admitted. She didn’t sound particularly put out by my comment. “I’ll just get dressed and see myself out, then.” She sauntered over to the living room, her movements unhurried, and dropped the towel on the couch.

Thomas turned back to me, his expression somewhat guarded, like he expected a lecture. I shrugged. I’d gotten used to the revolving door of women, and Thomas was a lot better about doing his share of the house work and making sure they didn’t mess the place up too badly than he had been in the past. It was just that sometimes I felt jealous, or possessive, or whatever word can be used to describe when you want your brother to sleep with you and no one else, and that manifested itself in cattiness towards his dates.

I was turning into a teenaged girl. A twisted, perverse teenaged girl.

Mouse finished licking his bowl and came over to lean against my side, tail thumping heavily against the cabinets. I scratched his ears. “Don’t worry about it,” I told Thomas without looking at him.

We stood silently in the kitchen while the young woman put on her clothes. I ate the food Thomas had prepared, since neither of them seemed to want it, and tossed bits of scrambled egg to Mouse until it was gone. Maybe it was crass of me to eat something that had probably been made for the girl, but she wasn’t sticking around for it and there was no reason to let it go to waste. I certainly wasn’t jealous that Thomas never cooked me anything unless I’d been too horribly injured to do it myself.

The young lady in question finished getting dressed and went to the door of my basement apartment to leave. Thomas gave me an almost apologetic look before going to help her with the door. It was of heavy steel construction, designed to keep out burglars and the occasional demon, but it hadn’t been able to stand against a hoard of zombies, and it was bent out of its frame. It took me a lot of heaving and grunting to make it open, and the girl didn’t look like she was up to the task. Thomas opened it with a single sharp tug, and motioned her through like a gentleman. She smiled and murmured something I couldn’t hear before stepping out, and he closed the door behind her with the same ease. Vampires.

“So,” Thomas said as he came back to the kitchen. “We’ve got trouble?”

I nodded. “You remember that time when ran into each other at Mac’s, and then the streetlights started going out?”

Thomas frowned. “I remember the thing responsible seemed to shake off all your spells,” he replied. “It’s back?”

“It will be tomorrow night.” I filled him in on what Ramirez had told me; from the little thefts to the blood magic someone would be working with the artifacts, to the wardens’ apparent lack of interest. Thomas listened without saying anything, his expression dark. “I’ll do some research tonight,” I concluded. “See if I can’t figure out what we’re dealing with and how to kill it. Then tomorrow night I’ll stake out Edwards’ place.”

“Do you think your warlock will be there too?” Thomas asked.

“I hope not,” I said. “It’ll be bad enough just dealing with this thing and the person controlling it.”

“You want me to come with?”

I hesitated. Thomas was right about the way this thing had shaken off my magic during our last encounter. Only dropping it five stories down and collapsing a building on top of it had stopped it, and that was magic aimed at the structural supports, not the creature itself. If there were people in the building with it, or if we were on open ground, that tactic wouldn’t work. Thomas had been with me when I ran into it, and he had dealt the beast more damage with his knife than I had with my fire and force spells. Still, the thing had been a good match for him, and it was all he could do just to hold it off. It had inflicted wounds that drained his reserves to heal, and he’d been running on empty by the end of it. I didn’t want to ask him along on a suicide run.

I didn’t really want to make one alone either.

“Let me see what I can find out first,” I told him. “We ran in blind last time; if I can figure out what it is and what it’s vulnerable to, I should be able to handle it myself.”

Thomas nodded slowly. I knew he was thinking something similar- he would wait and see what I found out before he decided whether or not to follow me all the same. He’d turned up at just the right moment enough times in the past year that I had gotten used to the fact that he kept tabs on me when he knew I was handling a risky case, whether I’d asked him onto it or not. I’d never confronted him, and given that I had needed his help on more than one occasion I probably never would, but I generally tried to let him in on my plays now, instead of letting pride or misguided concern persuade me to keep him in the dark. It was incredibly reassuring to know that Thomas was watching my back even when he wasn’t walking at my side.

“I’ll ask Bob about our mystery monster,” I told him. “After that, I’ll see if Marcone can give me anything on Edwards and his knife.”

“You think he’ll just give you that information?” Thomas asked, which was a good point.

“I think he’ll act in the way that most benefits him,” I replied. “And if I can convince him that helping me help Edwards will mean he doesn’t have to worry about a super-powered warlock tearing up his city, I think he’ll go for it.” Thomas gave me a skeptical look. I shrugged.

“What about Murphy?” he asked. I blinked.

“What about her?”

Thomas rolled his eyes. “Come on, Harry. Chicago PD probably has all of Marcone’s lines tapped. If you contact him, it’ll probably get back to her. She’ll be pissed that you didn’t run it by her before making your move. And if she knows there’s a warlock in her jurisdiction and you went to Marcone instead of her…” He let the sentence hang like that, which was somehow worse than whatever he might have said. I didn’t want to imagine Murphy’s wrath.

“That would be bad,” I said simply, and Thomas nodded.

“It’ll go better for you if you bring her in now,” he said. “She won’t let you keep her off this case once she finds out about it, and the longer you wait the angrier she’ll be. Just talk to her, Harry.”

I had the sneaking suspicion that the whole ‘just talk to her’ thing was part of another attempt to bring Murphy and me closer together. Thomas had gotten the idea into his head awhile back that Murphy and I could be the perfect love match if we just got over ourselves, in spite of all the things standing in our way. The obnoxious part was that he had the right sense of things- or at least, how things had been up until my tentative feelings for Murphy had been eclipsed by some very certain and very un-actionable feelings for him.

I grimaced. I didn’t want to have the conversation about me and Murphy again. But I had to admit, nothing Thomas had said just now had been wrong.

If there was a wizard or a being from the Nevernever stirring up trouble in Chicago, Lieutenant Karrin Murphy of Special Investigations wasn’t going to stand by and let other people take care of it. She had proven herself against werewolves, vampires, faerie creatures, and a dozen other things, and while I’m personally of the opinion that a tiny blonde woman with the face of a high school cheerleader doesn’t belong in front of raging monsters no matter how well she handles a gun, I respect Murphy enough to let her decide for herself whether she wants in on a case. To say nothing of the fact that I knew she’d be livid if she found out I tried to keep her clear of it.

She also wouldn’t be happy about bringing Marcone on, and that part was unavoidable.

“I’ll deal with that after I talk to Bob,” I said.

Thomas shook his head at me. “You can’t avoid her forever.”

“Not forever. Just until later today!”

Thomas laughed. “Look at you. The great wizard Harry Dresden, afraid to talk to a girl.” His lips curved into a smirk, and his grey eyes glittered with amusement. Mockery looked good on him. Really good. That didn’t mean I had to take it.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m going to go research this monster. You, I don’t know, walk the dog, or something.” Mouse, who had laid down on the rug on the kitchen floor, perked up his ears and wagged his tail. I retreated to my bedroom, the sound of Thomas’s laughter following me until I shut the door.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Once in my room, I kicked back the rug that covered the trapdoor leading down into my lab. It was in the sub-basement below my basement apartment, and it was always cold, so I threw a flannel bathrobe on over my clothes before heading down. I’d once worn the bathrobe to a meeting of the White Council, since rules dictate that wizards in attendance must be wearing a robe. Aside from the insults a lot of people seemed to take, it hadn’t been much different from what everyone else was wearing. It’s our tendency to work in cold, damp, drafty rooms that sets the standard for wizard attire, not anything more mysterious.

The room I descended into was dark, but a whispered word brought to life the dozens of candles scattered around and illuminated the working chaos of my lab. Tables pressed against the walls were covered with books, notebooks, and loose papers, and the wire baskets anchored to the walls as shelves overflowed with all manner of containers holding all manner of supplies for different spells and potions. Another table in the middle of the room held my latest project, a scale model of the city done in pewter. It wasn’t finished yet, but I hoped that when it was I could use it to find and track objects and people throughout Chicago. My summoning ring, a circle of silver set into the cement floor of lab, was the only floor space clear of clutter. I had learned my lesson about keeping it clean long ago, when a demonic hitman broke into my apartment and I almost didn’t make it to the ring’s protection in time. A slightly newer patch of cement in the middle of the ring represented another run-in with the supernaturally evil, where I’d buried the coin holding the fallen angel Lasciel. Her shadow still resided in my head, locked up in a thought-prison until the next time I decided that I was desperate enough to make use of her knowledge and power.

But none of those things were what I was after at the moment.

I went to stand before a wooden bookshelf set into the wall. Each end was covered in a miniature volcano of multicolored wax, the remnants of many candles that had burned down. Between the candles stood precarious piles of Harlequin-esque romance novels and a bleached white human skull.

“Bob, wake up! I need your expertise.”

A pair of orange lights flickered to life in the eye sockets of the skull. “Flattery will only get you so far, mister!” the skull said, its jaw moving in a way that shouldn’t have been possible without muscles or ligaments. “It’s been months since you got me a new book! I even gave you a list of what I wanted!”

“And I told you I’m not buying fifty new releases,” I replied. “Some of those are only available in hardcover!” The skull started grumbling darkly in what might have been Middle German, or maybe Old Dutch; my grasp on Germanic languages has always been a little shaky. “You can pick five,” I said, _“if_ you can give me the information I need.”

The skull heaved a sigh, very overdramatic and put-upon. I waited. “Oh, alright. Slave driver.”

I rolled my eyes. Bob didn’t really grasp the concept of financial obligations, so it was hard to explain to him why I wasn’t about to drop a hundred dollars or more on his smutty books. I didn’t like shopping for them either, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. The one time I had complained to him about the looks I got while shopping for his erotica, he had told me I needed to get better acquainted with my own sexuality and offered to give me some pointers. It had been exceedingly uncomfortable.

Bob was an air spirit, a spirit of intellect, and he had no reason to know about money or modesty. His knowledge of magic was why I kept him around, and I’d say he’d forgotten more about it than I’d ever learned, except that he never forgot anything. He’d been a companion to wizards for hundreds of years, storing up everything they told him, and it had made him an invaluable source of knowledge.

It had also made him very dangerous in the wrong hands, which I had learned during my run-in with the necromancers last Halloween.

“I need some information on a creature of the Nevernever,” I told Bob.

“Which one?”

“I don’t know; that’s the problem.”

“You never make this easy for me, do you?”

“If I did, how would you amaze me with your great wealth of knowledge?”

“Again with the flattery!” the skull accused. “Mind you, my knowledge _is_ vast. Alright, Harry. I’ll accept your challenge. Hit me!”

I smiled in spite of myself. It wasn’t in Bob’s nature to hold out on me; he enjoyed showing off too much.

“Okay,” I said. “It looks like a cross between a human and a wolf, but it’s not a loup-garou, hexenwolf, lycanthrope, or a classic werewolf.”

“That’s helpful,” the skull said dryly.

“You’re the one who’s supposed to know things!”

“Give me more details, man! How do you know it’s not one of those? What does it look like? How big is it? What color are its eyes? What does it smell like?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. He was right.

“Hexenwolves and classic werewolves just look like big wolves, and lycanthropes just look like people,” I said, working through my thought process. “This thing didn’t look like either of those. It looked like the werewolves you see in the movies: a human with a snout and fur all over, or a wolf with really long hind legs. It would have been about my height standing, but it moved on all fours. It had green eyes. I don’t know what it smelled like.”

“What can it do?” Bob asked.

“It was strong enough to tear up concrete, and it had these long, sharp claws that it used to hurt people. And,” I added, “it was resistant to magic. I think it was shielded.”

“How so?”

“I threw fire at it,” I recalled. “But the flames just flew off of it. I could feel the spell hitting something solid, but I didn’t really have the chance to get a good sense of it. And every time I hit the thing directly with a blast of force, it just got back up.”

“Is that everything?

“Everything I can think of.”

“Huh!” Bob said. “I got nothing.”

I blinked. “You’ve got nothing?”

“Well, up until the last bit it sounded like a Fell, but they can’t use magic or shield themselves against it.”

“What’s a Fell?” I asked.

“Fell Wolves, or more often just ‘Fells,’ are some of the lesser known wyldfae,” Bob began.

I held up a hand. “Wait a minute.” I pulled out one of the chairs at the table below Bob’s shelf and sat down in it, then shoved aside the pile of books sitting in front of me and grabbed a piece of loose notebook paper and a pen. I scrawled the phrase ‘Fell Wolves’ on the top line and underlined it, then wrote ‘wyldfae’ beneath that. “Okay,” I said. “Now tell me.”

“Fells,” Bob continued, “usually live in extended family groupings, so it’s rare to see one by itself. They’ve been known to build rough tools. They usually stay in the Nevernever and they tend not to choose sides among the sidhe courts, so wizards don’t encounter them very often.”

“Could they be summoned by a wizard?”

“If the wizard knew their true Name, sure. Just like anything else in the Nevernever.” One side of the skull rose from the shelf, like a person tilting his head. “Do you think that’s what’s happening?”

“One wall of the building was destroyed before I even got there,” I recalled, “and the streetlights had all gone out. Someone there had to have been working magic. This thing never threw any at me, so I figure a wizard was responsible for that. Besides, there have been other cases similar to this one, where the same kind of creature stole magical artifacts and priceless heirlooms. I think they were summoned by a wizard for that purpose; unless you can think of another reason why a Fell Wolf would be crossing over and stealing things.”

“Hardly,” Bob sniffed. “It takes some serious juice to cross over from the other side. Not a lot of things can do it on their own. And Fells aren’t exactly the brightest fae in the field.”

“But perfect for a smash-and-grab with an intimidation factor."

“Ideal,” Bob agreed. “There’s not much written down about them, but many of the existing sources say that they’re very loyal, especially to those who feed them. After a few dealings, they might work for a wizard without being bound.”

I glanced up from my notes. “Interesting.” I’d encountered faeries that fit that description to a T, but they hadn’t looked or acted anything like what I’d seen at the shopping center two years ago. “Where would you get one of their Names?”

“Nowhere, as far as I know,” Bob said, somehow affecting a shrug with only his eye-lights. “They’re not particularly strong, as beings of the Nevernever go, and they’re no good as a source of information. Most wizards who’ve written about them in the past didn’t consider trying to learn their Names, or if they did they never added the Names to any of the usual compendiums.”

Compendiums of Names are like the card catalogues of informational resources in the spirit world. All apprentice wizards are given a copy of one basic compendium or another when they start to learn summoning. Some of the more popular ones are hardly any use at all, because anything in them you try to summon is already out on someone else’s call, or trapped between calls. Every wizard I ever met also kept their own personal collections of Names, ones they’d gotten from compendiums, or other wizards, or from beings of the Nevernever themselves, if they were vindictive enough to share others’ Names or foolish enough to drop their own. I had an oversized green binder full of Names, carefully written out in the phonetic alphabet, but most of them I only called upon in cases of dire need. Those beings could tell me what was going on with the movers and shakers of the Nevernever or even the mortal world, but always at a steep price.

Then there were the dewdrop faeries, pixies, or wee folk, who could find people, follow them, relate information on local happenings, or do simple tasks, all for the reasonable price of a large pizza. I had a group of them on retainer with weekly deliveries, and I’d never regretted hiring them. They’d been a valuable asset to me in the past, and one not many wizards would think of utilizing.

It looked like my thief was a bit of an innovator, too.

“So they’re faeries,” I said. “The basic weaknesses still apply, right? Cold iron, running water, the works?”

“No reason why they wouldn’t.” Bob said.

“Great.” I breathed a sigh of relief. Knowing that all I needed was a little iron made everything a lot simpler.

“Of course,” Bob added, “there’s no reason they shouldn’t be burned by spellfire either.” His tone had lost its jocularity and his flickering eye-lights somehow looked thoughtful. “They’re not powerful enough to be able to shake off a wizard’s battle spells without being affected, and there’s no evidence of them using magic themselves.”

I considered that. It was entirely possible that we had the identification wrong, that these weren’t Fells but some other being of the Nevernever, even something iron wouldn’t work on. In that case, going against them armed to the teeth with iron and steel would probably get me killed.

On the other hand, I already knew they were working for a wizard, and given what I had felt of the spell I doubted it had been woven by one of the fae, or anything non-human. That presented a separate set of problems, though, since I wasn’t good enough with subtle magics to be able to unweave another wizard’s spell. Most wardens carried swords that could cut through spells like that for them, but I guess they didn’t trust me enough to give me one. Breaking through the shield directly would be difficult, since the thief’s spell had already proven itself against my fire and force magic. It hadn’t seemed to stop Thomas’s knife, though, or to hold against the weight of a building, so maybe it was only designed to fend off magical attacks. Then again, if it were me summoning the Fells, I’d have realized that weakness after the last fight and reworked my shield spell.

I looked down at the black leather glove I wore habitually over my left hand. I had constructed my own shield bracelet to hold against force, but not against heat, and one of my enemies had recognized that weakness and exploited it. My hand had been badly burned in the battle and come out looking like a prop from a horror movie. I couldn’t move it much, or feel it, but I’d refused to let the doctors cut it off, no matter how cool I would have looked with a hook in its place. I wore the glove to avoid terrifying small children when I went out in public; it was only polite.

The shield bracelet I wore on my wrist was the same one I’d had back then. Some of the silver shield charms were still blackened from the heat, and the shield itself bled blue sparks when I used it. I’d been meaning to rework the design and replace it, but I’d never actually gotten around to it.

Maybe the thief hadn’t either.

Maybe there were too many maybes in this for my liking.

I considered my options. I could call Ramirez back, try to get more specifics about what had been stolen so I could ask Bob what kind of spell might be done with it. I could summon up a couple of my sources in the spirit world and see if they knew of anyone summoning Fells, though I was reluctant to expose myself to the risks involved in doing that. I could dig out some of my books on the Nevernever and see if they had anything to offer on Fells, though it might be less that Bob had told me and it might take hours to find.

Or, I thought, I could stop procrastinating and start making calls to Murphy and Marcone. There was no need to know what precisely could be done with the artifacts if I stopped them from being stolen in the first place, and no information on Fells in general would tell me how well or poorly these particular Fells might be shielded. On the other hand, the information I could get from Marcone on Edwards was vital to preventing the theft, and before I could talk to him I needed to talk to Murphy. Putting it off wouldn’t make it any less necessary.

I’d thought to avoid calling her because I didn’t want to get Murphy involved, but that really wasn’t my choice to make. She was the head of CPD’s Special Investigations, and any magical crime in Chicago was by definition her business. Once she heard about the situation she’d insist on coming along, and nothing I could say would change her mind. Besides, she knew how to handle herself and she wouldn’t be a liability in a fight, so I had no right to tell her to back out.

“Okay,” I sighed, looking over the notes I had made one last time before putting down my pen. “Thanks for your help, Bob.”

“Don’t forget my books, Harry,” the skull reminded me. “You promised!”

“Give me five titles when all this is done, and I’ll buy them for you. Five,” I repeated sternly. “No more than that.”

“Stingy, Harry. See what you get for Christmas this year!”

“You don’t go Christmas shopping; you’re a skull,” I muttered mostly to myself as I climbed back up the ladder and out of the lab.

I went back into the living room to find it warmer than I had left it. Thomas had lit a fire in the hearth, the main heat source for my apartment since I can’t keep central heating working any better than the water heater. I took off my robe and hung it over the back of the couch, looking around the room. Thomas had also taken me up on my suggestion of walking the dog. Both he and Mouse were gone, and he had apparently let Mister, my cat, out for his morning ramble. Barring the talking skull in the sub-basement, I had the apartment to myself.

I went to the phone sitting in the kitchen and started to dial Murphy’s number.

It rang just as my fingers brushed it.

I pulled my hand back like I’d been shocked, and stared at the phone in suspicion. As old as it was, it was still possible that my magic had caused it to malfunction.

The phone rang twice more.

I reached out and picked it up warily. “Dresden.”

“Harry, I’ve got a case that might be your thing,” Murphy’s voice said in my ear. Her words were clipped, her tone sharp. She was irritated. “Can you come by and take a look?”

I tried to recover from my surprise. “Can I…?”

“Can you look at my crime scene, yes or no?” Murphy asked, pausing between words and annunciating clearly. I winced. Now she was irritated with me.

“Yes,” I said immediately, before she could get any more wound up. “Where is it?” She gave me an address and hung up without saying good-bye. I scribbled a note for Thomas letting him know where I’d gone, then threw on my leather duster. It was early spring outside, still cold enough in Chicago for the heavy coat, and besides that I liked knowing the protective spells I’d woven into the leather were covering my back. Think of it as the adult version of a security blanket.

I took my .44 out of the pocket and left it on the kitchen counter. Police don’t generally like it if you turn up to their crime scenes carrying a gun, even if you are a licensed consultant. I left the dark cylinder of wood carved with runes, my blasting rod, dangling from its thong inside the coat. You never know when you might need to defend yourself, and in my experience the rod didn’t ruffle nearly as many feathers as the gun.

So attired, I went out to my car and drove to the address Murphy had given me. Her crime scene turned out to be an art gallery, yellow tape draped across its front doors. A small cluster of people stood on the sidewalk, talking, and several uniformed cops and gallery security guards were milling about. I got out of my car and went up to the building.

“Hold it,” a burly, balding man in a blue uniform said before I’d even gotten up the steps. “This here’s a crime scene; can’t you see the yellow tape?”

“Aw, shucks, you mean I can’t go in and gawk at the dead guy?” I asked, putting on my most innocent look. The cop’s eyes narrowed and he looked me up and down, his hand going to his belt.

“Woah, there, John McClane.” I held up both of my hands, to show they were empty, then slowly and deliberately reached into my duster for my credentials. “Name’s Harry Dresden; I’m a consultant for CPD. I got a call to come down here ASAP.”

John McClane snatched my wallet from my hands and eyed my consulting license, then for good measure he flipped it over and eyed my driver’s license too, which had an infinitely worse photo. The DMV cameras may be old, but they’re also prone to breakdowns at the slightest provocation, and they really, really don’t like me.

“Heard of you,” John McClane said, tossing the wallet back. “The wizard, right? There was an article in the Arcane awhile back.  There’s a psychic who works with missing persons on the regular, but even she has too much self-respect to appear in that kind of rag.”

I bristled, more at the insult to the article in the Arcane than the one to my self-respect; that had taken worse blows, and no doubt would again. The Chicago Arcane was a yellow paper of the worst order, no mistake, but once in a while it printed something real. Most of those articles had come from Susan Rodriguez, a bright young woman who had been determined to show the world the truth about what was out there. She had been my girlfriend, the woman I’d loved, the woman I’d wanted to marry. Now she was somewhere in South America, working with a rebel resistance to the vampire lords that had enslaved unknown thousands and fighting her own half-vampire bloodlust, because of the danger I’d let her get into while chasing a story.

I’ve always had a temper. It got me into trouble a lot as a kid, especially during the time I spent in the foster system. Hell, it still got me into plenty of trouble, but I’d learned to master it, to a degree, if for no other reason than to avoid instinctively mouthing off at things that could squash me like a bug. (I still mouthed off at them, of course, but it was calculated, not instinctive. There’s a difference.) So when I realized that my right hand was gripping my blasting rod white-knuckle tight under my leather duster, I forced myself to take a deep breath and ease up. I didn’t want John McClane shooting me because he thought I was about to pull a gun.

“Insult me, fine,” I said, faking nonchalance, “but the Arcane is a well-respected news source. I’ll have you know it’s won awards among yellow journals for its hard-hitting reports on moonman sightings.”

John McClane noted the sarcasm, which was more than I could say for some of the thugs I’d dealt with over the years, but he didn’t seem amused by it. There’s just no pleasing some people. “You know what I think,” he said, glowering at me and crossing his arms over his chest.

I spread my arms. “Enlighten me.”

“I think CPD doesn’t need a smart-mouthed psychic on the case who can’t even get the spirits to tell him what crime he’s investigating.”

I winced. I’d assumed it was a murder because that was generally the only thing serious enough for Murphy to call me in on. If I was wrong, I’d not only made myself look like a piss-poor psychic, but also appeared out of the loop, which wasn’t a good way to convince someone to let you into a secure area. For all he knew, I was some charlatan who had seen the commotion and stopped by to see if he could make a quick buck.

“Look, I wasn’t just cruising by and I didn’t pick it up on a scanner,” I said, trying to play nice. “Lieutenant Karrin Murphy asked me down here and she was in too much of a hurry to tell me on what. If you wanna send someone inside for her, I’ll wait right out here. She’ll tell you I’m legit.”

McClane thought about it for a moment, rubbing his chin with a large hand, then called over a fresh-faced young cop and sent him inside for Murphy. McClane and I waited outside in silence. The rookie hadn’t been gone thirty seconds when he came back out again, trailing anxiously behind Murphy, who looked like she was on a warpath.

Karrin Murphy didn’t look like a tough-as-nails cop, but I’d learned long ago not to let that fool me. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet, with blonde hair and a cute button nose that turned up a bit at the end. Her wiry figure would have been suited to a gymnast’s leotard, but she wore a pantsuit, men’s clothing tailored to a woman’s figure, and her shield was in plain view on her belt

“Dresden!” Murphy shouted before she’d gotten near. “Get your ass inside! We don’t pay you to sit around and talk!”

I saluted sharply. “Yes ma’am!”

Murphy’s mouth tightened and I backpedaled. “I mean, yes, Murph.”

She didn’t so much as acknowledge my correction before she turned from me to John McClane, hooking the thumb of one hand through her belt loop by her shield. The motion may have been subconscious, but it definitely had the effect of drawing attention to the word ‘lieutenant’ and reminding anyone who doubted it that she was a well-respected cop.

“Ma’am, do you know this man?” John McClane asked in the same tone a cop might have used with a woman he suspected was being harassed. I took a step back, just to make sure I was out of range of any potential blood spatter.

Murphy’s eyes glittered, but her response was cool. “He’s a consultant who has assisted me in many cases, and if you’ve already seen his license like Officer Matthews said, you should have sent him inside by now. Let’s go, Dresden.” She turned on her heel and started back up the steps to the door, leaving John McClane looking stunned.

I grinned and waved at the cop. “See you around, John,” I told him, then followed Murphy to the door. Normally I’d try to race her to it, get a rise out of her by treating her like a lady and holding the door. Not today. She was already in a bad mood, and I didn’t want her wrath turned on me. Murphy was formidable in her own right, even if I didn’t admit it often, and I didn’t want her genuinely mad at me; not ever.

The rookie who had been sent to fetch her must have been from a different precinct, because he obviously didn’t know Murphy very well. As we approached the gallery, he reached for the handle of the glass door and held in open. For a moment I thought Murphy was going to throw him through it. I wasn’t sure if I was glad to see her angry at someone else for a change, or bothered that another person could annoy her better than I could.

Murphy led me through the atrium into the gallery itself, and looked up at me with a neutral expression as we walked. “That officer’s name is Garret Brown.”

“Is it?” I asked innocently.

“Yeah,” Murphy said. I shrugged. She rolled her eyes, the barest hint of a smile pulling at her lips, and I privately applauded myself for breaking the tension.

As we walked deeper into the gallery I observed our surroundings, filing it all away in my mind. I’d never been in this particular art gallery (my idea of fine craftsmanship is one of MacAnally’s signature microbrews, so that should tell you what I think of paintings) but I took note of the layout of the building while we moved through it. We started in minimalism, then moved on to surrealism and late-1800’s neo-impressionism. (Hey, just because I don’t care about paintings doesn’t mean I don’t know them. I got an A in art appreciation in high school.) Rather than the art itself, though, I was looking mainly at the security features, none of which seemed to have been upset, and at the people around us, who generally looked very upset.

“Lots of cops here,” I said under my breath. “Is this an official SI case?”

“No,” Murphy admitted. “It’s too high-profile for them to hand it off to us, even if it is mysterious.”

“What are we dealing with here, exactly?” I asked. “Murder? Theft? Property damage?”

“Theft,” Murphy said, “of a piece from the new exhibit. It was only on display for one day before it was taken. The artist is beside herself, and her insurance company is already threatening the gallery owners. I’d just as soon not get tied up in that end of it.”

I noticed that the galleries we were walking through had become increasingly unoccupied. I guessed Murphy was taking a round-about way to avoid running into any of the bigwigs.

“Have a look,” Murphy said, handing me a pamphlet that had been tucked into the back of her notebook. It was an advertisement for a new museum exhibit, the centerpiece of which was a sculpture by a Ms. Zelma Sharp. A full color picture of the sculpture spanned two pages of the interior of the pamphlet. It was an abstract shape done in browns and blacks and reds that quite frankly resembled nothing so much as a flaming pile of poo.

I had the sudden and vivid memory of an encounter with a demonic monkey that made improvised projectiles from the same material. “Boy, they’ll put anything in a museum these days,” I said. Murphy’s lips quirked, but she fought down the smile before it could fully form.

“The power went out in the museum and the surrounding four blocks at about one thirty-five this morning,” Murphy went on. “The video cameras and all other electronic systems were down for about thirty seconds. Then the power came back on, and the sculpture was missing. There was no damage to the physical security measures, and we’ve got people examining the power lines but so far it looks like they haven’t been tampered with.”

“It sounds like a movie,” I commented. “The perfect crime. You need a whole crew to pull that off, right?”

“Except that that kind of thing never really happens outside of the movies.” Murphy massaged her temples. “You don’t really have thieves dangling by a wire from the air ducts. Larceny and white collar crimes are both here, and no one from either squad had ever seen anything like this.”

“So you think it was done with magic?”

“I don’t know what to think, Harry. But you have to admit, electrical systems shorting out sounds like your type of thing, doesn’t it?” She paused at the door to the next gallery, then beckoned me forward. It was a cavernous place with vaulted ceilings and glass windows extending the length of the outer wall. Cops, gallery security, and other older men wearing the pinstriped uniform of insurance investigators milled about. A large white pedestal stood in the center of the room, conspicuously empty.

“Is the security system still active?” I asked, looking suspiciously at the video camera I could see from the doorway. “I don’t want to short it out.”

“It’s been deactivated,” Murphy said. “Cyber-crimes is going over every pixel of video data, trying to figure out if the thief tampered with it.”

A little more reassured, I stepped into the room. People had already taken notice of me, with my duster that stood out like a sore thumb around the uniforms and business attire, and they were casting surreptitious glances in my direction. As John McClane/Garret Brown had already shown, there were some people in the department who thought I was a charlatan scamming SI with fake leads. It didn’t help matters that I went down on billings as a psychic consultant. Psychomancy is forbidden under the Laws of Magic, so of course I’ve never used that.

Murphy led the way over to the podium that the sculpture had apparently been taken from, her expression daring anyone in the room to object to my presence. I followed her, tuning out the mutterings and glances and focusing on what my detective instincts had to say. There had been no signs of breaking and entering at the front door or down any of the hallways we had come through, just as Murphy had said. That held true in this room as well. There had apparently been a Plexiglas case over whatever had been taken, but there wasn’t a scratch on its surface. Some kind of electronic locking mechanism had held the case in place, and when I got near it a red light on the side started flashing. I ignored the light and prodded the case lightly with one finger from my gloved hand. It stayed in place, so the bolts holding it to the podium hadn’t been tampered with either.

“Well?” Murphy asked softly.

I shrugged. “No sign of the security measures being messed with, but you knew that already.” I reached out with my senses, feeling for the traces of magical workings in the air. Such things were usually faint, and disappeared at dawn. If the theft had happened last night, there wasn’t much chance of any magic being left, if any had been done at all.

Which was why I was surprised to feel a distinct shadow of magic originating from just above the top of the podium. I stepped closer, passing my left hand, the side that receives energy, over the Plexiglas case. Then I pressed my hand flat against it, trying to get a better sense of what I was feeling. Whatever it was, it was on the other side of the Plexiglas, and that was obscuring my senses a bit.

“Can you open this?” I asked Murphy.

“Not me.” She glanced over at a cluster of men in suits who were still looking at us. “Do you need it open?”

“There was magic done here, but inside the case,” I told her. “I want a closer look at it.”

“Can you track it back to the person who did it?” she asked. I shook my head.

“That’s not really possible. If there were more of it, I might have been able to get a sense of the person who cast it, or at least what emotions they were feeling at the time, but there’s barely any trace of the spell left now.”

“So what do you want to learn from it?”

“What it was doing, for starters. And why it appeared inside of a locked case without disturbing the case itself.”

“And you think you’ll be able to learn that if you get the case open?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on how much is left.”

Murphy sighed and rocked back on her heels. “Alright,” she said after a moment. “I’ll go talk to the head of security.”

I watched as Murphy approached the men who were talking in the corner of the room. They didn’t look like they appreciated being interrupted, but at least none of them seemed to say anything to piss her off. A few moments later she came back, leading a bald man in a grey pinstripe who was built like a wall and sweating like a pig.

“Harry,” she told me, “this is Gregory Washburn, head of gallery security. Mr. Washburn, my consultant, Harry Dresden. I’d like you to open the security case so he can have a look inside it.”

“I don’t see what good it will do,” Washburn said in a nasally voice. “It’s very obvious that the sculpture is gone, and that it must have been someone from my gallery who did it.” He fiddled with the little electronic lock even as he complained, and seemed to be talking mostly to himself. “No one else would have the security combination. This is going to ruin me.” He tilted the Plexiglas case back from the top of the podium. “There you are. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Nothing at the moment,” Murphy said with a sweet, sharp little smile. Washburn gulped and took a few steps back, but not back to the group he had come from. He stood off to the side, watching me like he thought I was somehow going to damage something. In all fairness, there was a good chance I would short out the lock.

I reached out into the air space where the top of the case had been, feeling for the magic that had been inside it. I could sense it hovering there a foot above the top of the podium. What was more, I could also feel a slight buzz across my senses that indicated a thinning of the walls between worlds. It had been a small tear, and there would probably be no trace of it before the day was out, but it had definitely been there.

“Someone opened a portal from the Nevernever,” I told Murphy under my breath.

“What, right here?” She looked startled. I didn’t blame her.

“Yeah. Right under the top of the box, but without touching the top or the walls. Whoever did it could just have reached through and pulled the sculpture out. This was precision work. I’ve never heard of anyone opening portals like this.”

Murphy frowned as she took in what I’d told her. I’d explained to her the basics of what the Nevernever was, including how wizards and some other beings could create doors into it at will. Time and space worked differently over there, so a few yards of walking on the other side could bring you out on the opposite end of the globe from where you’d started, but unless you took one of the known and tested routes, the Ways, you'd have no way of knowing what might be waiting through any given door. I knew Murphy was thinking the same thing I was: if someone had a good enough grasp on the Nevernever to be able to open doors directly in front of whatever they wanted to steal, that person had to be a very skilled wizard, and potentially a very dangerous one.

“What’s on the other side here?” Murphy asked.

“No way to know without crossing over,” I said, “and I’m not about to do that in front of all these people.” Murphy pulled a face, but she nodded. She understood that it just wasn’t practical to work magic like that in a room full of people.

“Do you have any other leads?” I asked her.

Murphy shook her head. “Crime scene dusted the entire room for prints and turned up nothing, and the technical analysts haven’t made anything from the video footage we have.”

“Did they dust the inside of the case?” I asked, struck by a sudden inspiration. “It sounded like Washburn hadn’t opened it yet.”

“They didn’t,” Murphy admitted. “I’ll have to get them back in here.” She looked up at me and smiled, the first genuine smile I’d seen on her face all day. “Good thinking, Dresden.”

“I’ve been known to have good ideas on occasion.”

“Yeah, like once in a blue moon.” Murphy snorted. It was very unladylike, but I wisely didn’t comment. “I’ll get crime scene back in here,” she told me, “and then I’m going back to the station house. I don’t want to be around when the media circus comes through. I’ll let you know if they find anything new, or if the video turns up anything.”

“Before you leave, can I talk to you in private?” I asked. She gave me a look, head tilted in curiosity. “It’s about another case,” I clarified. “Something from my end of the street.”

“Sure,” Murphy said, glancing over at Washburn like she thought he might be listening in. “Just let me get someone to dust the case and we can talk.” I nodded, and she left the room briefly, coming back with a harried-looking young man wearing purple latex gloves. Murphy put him to work dusting the inside of the display case, then came back to me.

“Let’s go outside,” she said. “There are too many people in here.” I agreed and followed her back to the front of the building, again through a circuitous route. When we got out front there was a knot of reporters with video cameras and big boom mics surrounding Washburn and another well-dressed man, who seemed to be doing most of the talking. I gave them a wide berth for the sake of their equipment, and Murphy and I came to a stop next to my car.

“Alright, Harry,” she told me when we got there. “Let’s have it.”

“I got a call from one of the White Council Wardens today,” I began. Murphy’s eyebrows went up in surprise and then down in a look of suspicion and worry. What little she knew of the White Council and the Wardens had all come from me, and I may not be the most impartial judge. She knew that the Wardens had had it in for me for most of my life, even going so far as to try to force me to act against them so they could execute me. She knew that they had allowed Red Court vampires to feed on the people of her city with impunity, until I had forced them into action by starting a war. And she knew that the Council didn’t like it when mortals learned of its existence, and might have her killed just for knowing about them. 

“Go on,” Murphy said.

“There’ve been some thefts around the country recently,” I explained. “Magical artifacts that could be used in some dangerous spells, probably powered by blood sacrifice.” I briefly recounted what I’d learned from Ramirez about the thefts, including the use of faerie creatures and the series of smaller crimes that seemed to be leading to Chicago. Murphy listened intently, her tiredness evaporating and leaving a grim determination in its wake.

“Does he have any idea what their target is?” Murphy asked when I had finished. Her eyes flashed with eagerness, ready to take up the hunt after whatever criminal dared to act in her city.

I didn’t share her enthusiasm. “That’s the thing,” I said slowly. “The warden who has been tracking the thefts thinks the thief is going to hit a known associate of Marcone’s, Quintin Edwards, tomorrow night.”

“Marcone,” Murphy repeated, frowning.

“Right,” I said. She eyed me suspiciously, and I could see the gears turning in her head.

“You think he’s involved with the thefts?”

I blinked. I hadn’t considered it. “Unlikely,” I told her after a moment’s deliberation. “If Marcone wanted those artifacts, all he’d have to do was buy them. No sense hiring a wizard thief and risk getting the attention of the White Council.” I wasn’t sure if Marcone was even aware of the White Council, but it was a fair bet that he was. “I doubt he or Edwards knows what the artifact does, or that anyone’s coming after it.”

Murphy considered me in silence, and I could see the moment when she realized what I wanted by the way her mouth twisted downwards. “You want to tell Marcone what’s going on.” It wasn’t a question.

I nodded. “I can’t exactly go up to Edwards and tell him that I’m a wizard and I think an evil sorcerer is going to summon a monster to break into his home and steal his possessions.” Murphy snorted; she didn’t think that would go over any better than I did.

“But,” I went on, “I figure if I tell Marcone, he can get me in with Edwards and I can stop the theft, and everyone goes home safe and happy.”

“Or,” Murphy said, “I can tell Edwards that Chicago PD picked up an anonymous tip that someone planned to rob him tomorrow night, and that I’m putting my best consultant on the case. Marcone doesn’t need to be involved at all.”

I shook my head. “Edwards could refuse police protection, and chances are he will if he has private security in place already. We need to convince him that he needs me, specifically, and the best way to do that it with a recommendation he can’t ignore.”

“So you want Edwards to hire you on to defend his home, and you want Marcone to broker the deal.” Her lip curled in a half-sneer around Marcone’s name. I felt uneasy.

“Something like that,” I said.

“You think Marcone won’t ask for a finder’s fee?”

I did. I just hoped I could convince him I wasn’t the person to pay it. I didn’t have much in the way of money, but there were worse things Marcone could ask of me. It was never good to owe someone you couldn’t trust. “If he does,” I said to Murphy, “shouldn’t it come from Edwards, not me?”

“You’re the one who wants to play Let’s Make A Deal, Dresden,” Murphy drawled. “Edwards doesn’t even know he needs you yet.” She considered it for a moment. “What’s the worst that happens if you can’t stop the thief from getting Edwards’ artifact?”

“The worst? Evil wizard gets the tools he needs to do some big, bloody magic, and I have no leads on how to find him and stop him. He sacrifices a dozen or so people, then goes god-mode and wipes out the rest of the city, maybe the world.”

Murphy bared her teeth. I knew that just the thought of some warlock threatening her city probably had her blood boiling, but she kept her cool pretty well. Better than I ever had, at any rate. “Okay, so failure isn’t an option.”

“No,” I agreed. “It’s not.”

“And there’s no other way but to go through Marcone?” She had a greenish look to her face, like the very thought of working with Chicago’s most notorious criminal made her physically ill.

I knew how she felt. Marcone had offered me employment in the past, a real sweetheart deal, and all above board. I’d turned him down because I didn’t want his blood money. I didn’t like working with Marcone, and I definitely didn’t like going to him for help. But if there was any other way, I couldn’t see it.

“Not unless you think Edwards would be responsive to me up and asking where he keeps his Mayan artifacts and if I can guard them for the night.” Murphy gave me a look that clearly communicated that she did not. I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t like it either, Murph, believe me. But I need an in with Edwards, and Marcone already knows a thing or two about magic, and about me. He’ll know I’m serious about what could happen if the thief isn’t stopped, and I’m sure he can make Edwards see things his way too.”

Murphy nodded in reluctant agreement. “Okay,” she said, thought it looked like it pained her. “Make the call to Marcone.” She met my eyes briefly before glancing away. “Just promise me one thing.”

Ho boy. I hate having beautiful women ask me for promises. It has never turned out well for me.

“What?” I asked, wary.

“Promise you won’t let Marcone make you owe him one.” She gave me a stern look without quite meeting my eyes. “Don’t give him any favors. I know you have this ridiculously outdated sense of chivalry and honor,” (“Hey!” I complained), “and you stick by your word, but Marcone is a snake. You can’t trust him to keep his word, so don’t give him yours. I don’t want him to have any kind of hold over you.”

I thought she was being a little harsh, though I wasn’t about to tell her that. It was true enough that I didn’t want to owe a favor to John Marcone, but he wasn’t exactly the snake Murphy made him out to be. I knew; I’d looked into his soul. He was a tiger, and he ruled the streets with an iron fist, making order out of chaos through main strength. Marcone was, at his core, a businessman who made his choices based on analyses of the costs and benefits. You don’t renege on your deals. It’s bad for business.

I didn’t say any of that to Murphy, though. She wouldn’t have taken it well. “That makes two of us,” I told her instead. “Don’t worry about it. That’s one thing I can promise you won’t happen.”

She nodded, still looking troubled. “Alright, then. Call me when it’s done.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd meant to have this up on Thursday, but the wifi went out unexpectedly, so to make up for it I'd posted 3 and 4 together. Chapter 5 should be up in a much shorter amount of time.

I stopped for lunch at Burger King on my way home from the crime scene, since it was past noon by the time I left. I set the bag on the improvised console I’d installed after the interior of my VW bug had been destroyed by mold demons, and gulped down bites of cheesy, meaty goodness whenever I stopped at a red light.

With the few brain cells I could spare from driving and eating with only one fully functional hand, I contemplated what I knew. First, there was a thief in Chicago, or at least one who had been in Chicago, who was working from the Nevernever. This thief had the skill to open portals with amazing precision, and he (or she, I suppose) used it to steal poo sculptures. Aside from the humanitarian benefit of taking such a hideous thing out of existence, I couldn’t imagine much motive for a wizard to do that unless he’d been hired.

Second, I had it from a very reliable source that there was another thief headed for Chicago, one who summoned and bound beings from the Nevernever to perform the thefts for him, and who had been hired by a warlock to steal artifacts to be used in some big, bloody spell.

There was no way those things didn’t fit together. There was also no way I could see that they did fit together. Why would someone whose MO had been using faeries switch to using portals? Why not use portals every time in the first place? Why hire someone to steal a sculpture when you were working on a spell that would give you power, or why take a job to steal one when you were working for someone who may soon be all-powerful?

You’re getting ahead of yourself, I thought. You don’t even know if these thieves are the same person. Maybe it’s just two separate incidents.

Maybe. In fact, two different thieves to chase sounded a lot like the kind of luck I tended to have. And one perp per crime was a simpler explanation, which common sense and Occam said was usually correct.

But my gut said that wasn’t right. And I’d learned to trust my gut. It kept me alive.

I thought back to my last encounter with the thief who used Fells. It had started with the streetlights flickering out in a wave, a surefire indicator of magic at work. Then I’d heard a woman’s scream. Thomas and I had tracked the scream and the outages back to a small shopping center where we’d saved two women and eventually buried the Fell in the rubble, after I’d let Thomas take some of my power to get us out of the building before I collapsed it.

My contemplation of the crimes got sidetracked as my body flushed with delicious heat at the memory. I had let Thomas feed off of me; demanded it, actually, because it seemed like the only way to save both our lives. The brief kiss had left me hard, breathless, and weak-kneed, quite literally. I’d been short on stamina for a week after that while my power levels recovered. I’d also woken up with damp sheets for a week afterwards, and I’d never been sure how much of that was an effect of his White Court powers, and how much was plain old attraction.

That was the incident that had finally forced me to admit to myself that I found Thomas appealing, and not just sexually. Certainly his sex appeal was something to be reckoned with, like a force of nature, and if I let myself dwell on it too long I went dizzy with desire, but frankly he was hardly the only superhumanly sexy being I’d encountered. Thomas was appealing in wholly different ways as well, and that was the real issue. I could imagine flirtation in the guise of verbal jousting over beer and sandwiches at Mac’s, stolen kisses and exchanges of power in between dancelike parries in pitched battle, all just as easily and with just as much desire as whatever plays for dominance might happen in the bedroom.

Face it, Harry, you’ve got it bad, and it has nothing to do with White Court charms.

The sound of a car horn behind me startled me from my thoughts. I shifted my foot from brakes to gas a little more abruptly than I should have, making the Beetle leap out across the intersection, and bent my hand into a gesture that had nothing to do with magic while another car swerved past me through the other lane. I had to stop at another red at the end of the block, and I rested my forehead against the steering wheel.

I really, really needed to get over this attraction to Thomas. It was twisted, hopeless, and it was starting to take over all of my waking and dreaming thoughts.

And I’d probably have an easier time getting rid of every dangerous magical being and mortal crook in the city than getting rid of this.

“Maybe it would be easier to bear if you sought satisfaction elsewhere, my host,” a light voice said from the empty air of the passenger seat.

I glanced over out of the corner of my eye as a form winked into being there. She was human enough in appearance -tall, blonde, clad in a Roman-style toga that showed off long, shapely legs- but I knew that it was merely an illusion. She was a fallen angel, or at least the shadow of one that had taken up residence in my head after I touched her coin. The real Lasciel was trapped in a silver denarius under several feet of concrete within my summoning ring.

“I don’t remember letting you out on parole,” I told her grimly. I made a slight effort of imagination, and her toga was replaced by an orange jumpsuit.

“Indeed not, my host,” Lasciel replied demurely. “I merely thought I might assist you by offering another outlet for your desires. As you know, I can take on whatever form will best please you.”

Within one heartbeat and the next the blonde woman in the seat next to me was gone, and in her place a man with long dark hair and deep grey eyes. Thomas.

I went ridged in my seat, horror and fascination warring within me as I looked over Lasciel’s illusion. It was a perfect replica of my brother, the curve of his lips and the curl of his hair, the stormcloud blue of his eyes and the ripple of his muscles. She had no doubt recreated him from what was stored in my memory, and I had memorized every detail.

Not-Thomas leaned towards me across the improvised console, eyes locked onto mine. “Harry,” he purred, and even the voice was perfect. It was too much.

I jerked my eyes away and focused back on the road, had about a millisecond to slam on the brakes to avoid ramming into the car stopped in front of me. My breath came in fast, ragged pants and my hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. I stared at the back end of the car in front of me and refused to let my eyes stray.

A hand settled on my thigh, long, slender fingers squeezing lightly before moving up. “Harry…” I could feel warm breath on my neck, and a shiver of desire ran through my body. I squeezed my eyes closed. A tiny, embarrassing little noise escaped from my throat and I heard a soft chuckle in my ear.

God help me, for a moment I actually considered it. I knew I could never be with Thomas like that, but maybe I could have something almost as good. He would never have to know. It would never hurt him. And I could have that perfect replica all to myself with no consequences. It would be the best solution for everybody.

I opened my eyes and turned to Not-Thomas, bringing my right hand up to brush across his perfect face. He leaned into it, closing his eyes and brushing a kiss against the pad of my thumb. My breath hitched in my throat. He opened his eyes and fixed me with a look of pure seduction, eyes half-closed with desire and lips parted in a wanton moan.

It made my skin crawl.

I guess Lasciel hadn’t had much experience at seduction while wearing a male form, because she got the body language all wrong. The look on Not-Thomas’s face screamed vulnerable, fuckable _woman_ , and the contradiction of it was enough to shock me out of my trance. The real Thomas would never wear that expression.

I felt a stab of guilt that I had tried to replace Thomas with a cheap imitation, and hard on its heels another stab of guilt and panic that I had nearly given myself over to the influence of a fallen angel. I had seen for myself what would come of that, and it was nothing good. For me, or for the rest of the world.

“Back off, Hell bitch,” I told Lasciel, my voice thick with desire and regret.

Not-Thomas’s lips quirked in a sad smile. “Get thee behind me, eh?”

“That’s right,” I said. I expended an effort of will, throwing my lust and my empty, aching sadness into it. Lasciel resumed her previous appearance, the blonde woman in the orange jumpsuit. I pictured her in a cage too small to allow for pacing and covered it with a thick canvas that blocked out light and sound. When I looked again, the seat beside me was empty.

I took a deep breath to calm myself and looked up at the traffic light just as it turned green. I pressed down on the gas pedal with judicious force and eased into the intersection with much more control than last time. I tried to focus on my driving instead of the roiling mess of emotions inside my head, and it took several blocks before I remembered that I had been in the middle of something.

Focus, Harry. Warlocks, thieves, faeries. Where was I? Oh, right. My last encounter with the Fells, at the little neighborhood shopping center.

So. What had the thief been after there?

It hadn’t been for something in the office. The Fell had kept coming after one of the women, even when Thomas and I got in its way, and had only turned its attention fully to us after we had held if off long enough for her to escape. But why it had been after her was a mystery. She hadn’t been a practitioner; I would have felt it when I touched her if she was. The chances that a vanilla mortal had been holding a magical artifact on the scale of what the thief had been stealing lately were vanishingly slim, as were the chances that I might have missed one on her.

Maybe if I could track her down she would have answers for me, or at least more information. But it had been years ago, and I didn’t have much to go on besides a former place of employment –now destroyed- and a first name. Nancy? Nicole? Natalie, that was it.

It wasn’t much of a lead, and definitely not something I could get to within the next day and a half. Still, it was something I was curious about. Maybe I could ask my thief after I’d caught him tomorrow night.

And if that wasn’t an overconfident statement, I didn’t know what was. I looked around for something made of wood to knock on and came up empty. I settled for wrapping one hand around the carved wood of my blasting rod and giving it a squeeze. That would have to be enough.

By the time I got back to the apartment Thomas had already returned from walking Mouse. He was sitting on the couch with the dog's head resting on his lap, and although both of them appeared relaxed I noticed that the military rapier Thomas kept in his steamer trunk had been removed and laid out on the coffee table within easy reach. I thought he must have been waiting for me, probably to hear what Murphy had called me in on and what I’d learned from Bob. He’d been expecting me to come home with trouble. Normally that would make me feel defensive, but after the call I’d gotten that morning I couldn’t blame him.

I greeted Thomas with a nod and walked past him to the kitchen, and the phone. I needed a little time to get my hormones under control before I talked to Thomas, and besides, I had a call to make.

I flipped through the rolodex next to the phone until I found the number I wanted. There was no ringing when I dialed, no polite “leave a message” recording; just an electronic tone. “This is Dresden,” I said. “One of your friends is being targeted. Call me, tonight. You know the number.”

I could feel Thomas’s eyes on me as I set the phone back in its cradle. I didn’t meet his gaze. Instead I turned to the ice box and got out a pair of coke cans. It was another stall, but with the way my morning had gone I figured I deserved the sugar and caffeine too. I pressed one of the chilled cans to my neck, hoping that the cold would help calm my body enough for me to face my brother. I counted ten slow breaths, then ventured out into my living room.

When I got there I found Mouse sprawled across the couch and Thomas’s legs. You have to understand, he’s no lap dog; there are ponies smaller than Mouse. There wasn’t any room left for me. I tried to shoo the dog off but he just gave me an unimpressed look and made a huffing noise before laying his head back on Thomas’s leg.

“He’s not supposed to be on the furniture,” I complained to no one in particular.

“Try telling him that,” Thomas replied, snatching one of the coke cans from my hand. I glared at Mouse. The dog remained unmoved. I sat in the easy chair next to the couch, muttering about dogs that are too smart for their own good.

I cracked open the coke and took a big gulp, then leaned back in my chair and sighed. Thomas held onto his, just watching me. He had been petting Mouse’s head when I came in, but his hand was still now. He was waiting for me to speak. I lowered my can, tapping my finger idly against the pull tab.

“There was a theft at an art gallery last night,” I began. Thomas shifted almost imperceptibly, his posture becoming more tense.

“Our thief jumped the gun?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. For one thing, what they stole was hardly a magical artifact. And Ramirez said there had been a string of cases all with the same MO. This one was totally different.”

Thomas’s eyes narrowed. “But it was your kind of thing?”

“Yup.” I handed him the museum pamphlet Murphy had given me earlier, folded open to the picture of the missing sculpture. Thomas’s eyebrows went up.

“Yikes,” he said. “The real mystery is why anyone would want it.”

I snorted, and almost choked on a mouthful of coke. “Unfortunately,” I said when I’d recovered, “that’s not the biggest question we have.” Thomas’s expression sobered, and he put the pamphlet aside. I filled him in on the gallery thief’s MO, the power outage and the perfectly placed portals. “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” I concluded. “No one opens gates with that kind of precision.”

“Something else to ask Bob about?” Thomas suggested.

“Definitely,” I agreed, thinking that it would probably mean I’d have to agree to buy more smutty books. I wondered absently if I could get Thomas to buy them if I gave him the money; at least that way I wouldn’t have to deal with the weird looks. But knowing Thomas, he would refuse just because he knew doing it myself would embarrass me. Big brothers can be awful like that.

The thought made a strange regretful feeling grow in my chest, but I kicked it down, and the shame that followed it. I didn’t want to feel those things, and I didn’t have time for them either.

I realized that Thomas was watching me, waiting for me to tell him more. “Right now,” I said, “whatever Bob can give us is the only lead we have on the newer case. Murphy said there was nothing on the security tapes and no evidence left behind, although they hadn’t gone over everything. There’s not much I can do about it, and honestly, it’s not my biggest priority right now.”

“Edwards,” Thomas said. I nodded. “You told Murphy about the case?”

“I told her.”

“And Marcone?”

I grimaced. “She doesn’t like it, but I think she sees why it’s necessary. She asked me to call her after I finished up with him.”

Thomas’s eyebrows flicked up; I guess he was surprised I’d managed to get her to agree to Marcone’s involvement. He didn’t miss a beat in the conversation, though. “What did Bob tell you about the artifact thief’s errand runners?”

“They’re called Fell Wolves. He thinks.”

“He _thinks_?” Thomas repeated, putting emphasis on the second word and eyeing me askance.

“They’re wyldfae, not particularly strong or intelligent, but loyal and great for intimidating mortals. They can be summoned with Names like any other faerie. It matches the physical description, except they’re not supposed to be able to shrug off magic.”

I didn’t need to explain my thought process; Thomas understood. “You think whoever is summoning them was also shielding them. But why not just veil them instead? For that matter, why not just take the things themselves, if it doesn’t matter if they get noticed?”

“It doesn’t matter if the _Fells_ get noticed,” I corrected. “It doesn’t matter if the Fells cause a scene, but the thief doesn’t want people to see him. Ramirez said there had never been any sighting of a person in the crime scenes who didn’t belong there, and nothing caught on tape either.”

I could see the wheels turning in Thomas’s head as he tried to puzzle it out, same as I was. “So maybe the thief wants to make a scene. He wants to draw attention to the thefts. Why?”

“Rub it in the wardens’ faces that they can’t catch him?” I suggested irritably. Thomas gave me doubtful look. I shook my head. “I don’t know yet. We’ll just have to ask when we catch him.”

We were both silent for a moment, contemplating the thief’s motives. Then Thomas spread his hands. “Or maybe he just wants someone else to do his dirty work for him and we’re thinking too hard about it. These Fells follow orders and they can be sacrificed without inconveniencing him. If the shield doesn’t hold and it dies, it’s no skin off his nose. If security or the police somehow capture it with iron or water, he can just release it from its bindings and it goes back to the Nevernever. A lot less trouble than potentially getting captured himself.”

“It’s possible,” I admitted. “Normally you’d want to use something smarter, but I guess if secrecy isn’t important these guys work fine.” The more I considered it, the more likely it seemed. Maybe I was too paranoid, thinking there had to be bigger reasons behind everything. Although my paranoia had saved my life in the past.

“Do you really think it’s a coincidence,” Thomas said slowly, drawing me from my thoughts, “that this gallery theft from the Nevernever happened at the same time we know another thief who uses magic is in town?”

I had thought about that a lot on the drive home, interruptions aside, and I’d come to the conclusion that even if I’d rather it was a coincidence, it probably wasn’t. And that as much as it frustrated me, I probably couldn’t do anything about it. Not from the gallery angle, anyway.

“My life is never that simple,” I said. Thomas rolled his eyes. I shrugged. “I’m sure there’s some kind of connection. But we have no leads to follow on the gallery case, and besides, modern art sculptures don’t make much of a magical focus. I’m not worried about what our thief, or thieves, might do with _that_.”

“So we follow the other case, and hope we find the connection somewhere along the line,” Thomas said, finally cracking open his can of coke.

“What’s this ‘we’ business?” I asked, grinning. I might complain about him trying to babysit me, but I was glad he was coming along.

“Come on, Harry.” Thomas smirked. “You know by now that I’m not letting my baby brother go alone.” He took a sip of his coke, and when he lowered it his smile had disappeared. He rolled the can between his hands, his expression thoughtful. “There’s more to this than what we can see now: you said yourself, things are never that simple.” He looked up at me. “It’s not that I think you can’t handle yourself; you know that.” His tone said statement, but his eyes, searching my face, said question.

“I know,” I assured him. “And I always appreciate the backup.”  He nodded, and I stood from my chair and clapped his shoulder briefly before walking past to the bedroom door. A lock of his hair brushed my wrist when I touched him, and I could feel my skin tingling even after I’d pulled away.

“I’m going to ask Bob if he’s heard of anyone opening small gates like thief number two,” I announced. “If Murphy or Marcone calls, come get me, okay?”

“Will do,” Thomas said, nudging Mouse’s head from his lap so he could stand. “I have a few calls of my own to make.” He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask.

I went down into my lab for the second time that day, and by the time I had the candles lit the orange lights in the skull’s eye sockets were glowing as well. “Made any progress on that book list?” I asked Bob.

“Funny, Harry. Actually, there are a few I’m conflicted on. Jessica Cox is one of my favorite writers, but Ruby Jackson’s newest book has rave reviews.”

“Well, while you’re still thinking about it,” I interrupting before he could get started on a tangent I really didn’t want to hear, “I have some more questions.”

“And I’m sure I’ll have more answers,” the skull said reasonably, “if you’ll buy me more books.”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “This is still the same case, so it’s part of the same deal. No new books.”

“Aw, Harry.”

“Don’t you ‘aw, Harry’ me. If I can’t solve this because of you withholding information, you won’t get any.”

“Fine.” Bob heaved a dramatic sigh so deep his skull almost came off the shelf on the inhale.

I got right to the point. “Have you ever heard of a wizard who could open doors from the Nevernever so small and well-placed they could just reach through and grab something?”

“Never,” Bob said. “And frankly, Harry, I don’t think your skill level is anywhere near what it would have to be to do that. Whatever you’re planning, you’ll need to find some other work-around. You’d have to know exactly which part of the Nevernever lined up with exactly which part of the physical world, down to the millimeter, and opening precise gates takes subtlety as well as power, which we both know isn’t your strong suit.”

I interrupted him again, waving a hand through the air. “This isn’t about me, Bob. I’m not asking if it could be done; I’m saying someone did it, and I’m trying to find out who.”

“Oh.” Bob’s eye lights flickered in what looked like a surprised blink. “Well, that’s an entirely different question,” he said, “and not one I have a ready answer to.”

“You’ve just been all kinds of helpful today,” I sulked. “Last time you had nothing; now you’ve got even more of nothing.”

“It’s not my fault you aren’t giving me much to work with, pal. And if you’ll recall, I did give you the name of what you’re dealing with.”

I sighed and looked down at the paper I had written my notes on the last time I’d asked for Bob’s help. He was right- he had given me something I could use, including the crucial fact that the monsters I was dealing with were vulnerable to iron. “Okay,” I said, drumming my fingers on the table. “Let’s try this from a different angle. Could a member of the Senior Council do it?”

Bob considered that for a moment. “Probably,” he said, “if they knew the place well enough. That’s the thing, Harry- you’d have to be intimately familiar with what’s on both sides of the border. It’s not something that could be done with an afternoon’s worth of reconnaissance.”

“So it’s less about power or skill and more about knowledge.”

“To put it mildly,” Bob confirmed.

I grabbed another sheet of paper and wrote ‘thief number 2’ across the top line, then jotted down the salient details of Murphy’s crime scene and the information Bob had just given me. “So,” I continued, clicking my pen in and out, “could a wizard who isn’t especially powerful do this if they knew both sides of the barrier well enough?”

“Probably,” Bob admitted. “Actually, the smaller the door, the less energy you would need to open it, and if they're just reaching through they wouldn’t have to expend a great deal of power holding it open. It wouldn't take much strength at all, but it would take a great deal of skill.”

“So we’re not dealing with a minor talent here,” I said.

“Well, that depends on what you mean by minor talent," Bob replied. "This isn’t the type of thing that comes standard in a wizard’s education; whoever is doing this is probably self-taught, at least in this regard. It’s possible that someone who doesn’t have the juice to sit on the White Council would still have the brains to pull this off.”

“Would someone without any formal training be able to open doors to the Nevernever in the first place?” I asked, thinking back to my own training on the subject. There was absolutely nothing about opening doors to the other side that felt intuitive, like the kind of thing a young magic user would come up with on their own. More often than not, young wizards without a guiding hand would end up meddling with the mundane too much, and using magic to get money or sex, rather than turning their sights to things outside of the mortal realm.

“Again, it depends,” Bob hedged, “on what you mean by formal training”

I glared at the skull. “That’s helpful.”

“What I mean, Harry, is that there’s a difference between not being trained as an apprentice by a White Council wizard, and not being trained at all. There are people out there powerful enough and skilled enough to be called wizards who don’t sit on the White Council. There are families with talent going back for generations who train their children themselves without any input from the Council, and more than a few people with too little strength to pass the Trials who still possess a great deal of skill or knowledge.”

“You’re talking about a sorcerer,” I said.

“If you want to call them that, yes,” Bob agreed. “The point is that there are a lot of practitioners out there that the Council doesn’t control, and any number of them could have done this.”

“Great,” I sighed, flinging my pen down on the paper. “So we’ve gone from ‘never heard of anyone who can do that’ to ‘any number of people could have done it.’ You’re really not helping with my suspect pool, here, Bob.”

“Okay, ‘any number’ might be a bit of a stretch,” he admitted. “This wouldn’t take too much power, but it would take skill, and brains, and imagination. You’d be surprised how rarely the last one shows up.”

I snorted and picked up my pen again, clicking it against the table as I thought. In my experience, imagination and innovation were rare things to find in communities of practitioners. The stronger of us tend to live much longer than your average mortal, and tend to get extremely set in their ways. They teach the same things they learned to generations of young ones, who then go on to teach the same things to others. You’ve got variations across cultures, sure, and the way wizards in Asia or Africa work magic is different from the way wizards in Europe or the Americas do it, but there’s actually surprisingly little change over time. Hell, when the White Council convenes we all speak Latin, even though the language has been dead for hundreds of years. That alone should tell you that we’re not big on changing with the times. The fact that technology tends to act up around us only adds to it; most of us couldn’t get with the times if we tried.

That was the White Council, but I was willing to bet that any clan of sorcerers or other group that had been passing its knowledge down from one generation to the next would be much the same. Innovation isn’t something you see much of when you’ve got tons of elders who’ve been around since the dawn of time clucking their tongues at the slightest modification of old practices. It was part of why the Council at large didn’t seem to like me very much. I was thumbing my nose at centuries of precedent by practicing my art in the open, even if my spellwork itself was fairly conventional.

The cases I was dealing with now weren’t conventional in the slightest. Thief number one summoned faeries no wizard had ever thought worth summoning, and thief number two used doors from the Nevernever in ways no one else ever had. That element of innovation by itself was an indicator that the two cases were linked, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure what the connection was between artifacts used in blood magic and an ugly piece of modern art, except maybe that they both caused suffering. I could only hope that I wouldn’t need to know the connection in order to stop whatever ritual was being planned.

“So I have a thief working with faeries,” I said aloud, “and a thief working from the Nevernever. Where does it all fit?”

“Damned if I know,” Bob said cheerily. “But you’ve sure got your work cut out for you.”

“Too right,” I muttered. “And so do you. I’ll need some help modifying some ward spells. I want to keep the Fells from getting near this Mayan knife.”

Bob made a disgusted noise. “I need a vacation.”

“Talk to the union,” I replied, and started pulling out notebooks I had written previous spells in. “Now look here, what about this one?”

“Sure, if you’re planning on holding off Black Court or zombies,” Bob said. “It won’t be very effective against something from Faerie. Turn to page ninety seven in the red notebook and get out a new sheet of paper.”

I did as I was told, and Bob walked me through a series of modifications to the spell. I don’t know how long we were working, but the candles had burned low in their holders by the time we were done. I had just finished drawing out the last of the lines of power that would form the fabric of the spell when I heard footsteps near the trapdoor of the sub-basement.

I glanced up at the hole in the ceiling, and Thomas’s form appeared there. “Marcone called,” Thomas said. “He’s waiting.”

“Be there in a second,” I told him. Thomas nodded and retreated from view. I stood up from the table and stretched my arms above my head with a groan, then started up the ladder to the main level.

“I’ll give you my book list by tomorrow!” Bob called after me. I rolled my eyes as I closed the trapdoor and kicked a rug over it. If Bob thought I was shopping for his books the day of the theft I was trying to prevent, he had another thing coming.

I went out into the living room and saw Thomas waiting by the phone, which lay off its cradle on the counter top. He had removed the shirt he’d worn while walking Mouse and stood in my kitchenette wearing only a pair of pants, his feet bare on the linoleum floor. It wasn’t an unusual sight, but the planes of his chest still drew my eye and for a second I lost track of what I’d been doing. I took a moment to compose myself before going over.

“What did you find out?” Thomas asked me as I drew near. I handed him my notes as an answer, taking care not to let our fingers brush.

Thomas squinted at the page. “Your handwriting is terrible.” I stuck my tongue out at him, then picked up the phone. I didn’t put it to my ear just yet, though. I wanted to make Marcone wait a little, annoy him a little, just because I could. It was a petty thing, but I never claimed to be above all that.

I watched Thomas read through my notes while I waited. His fingers traced the lines of cramped writing as he read, going through it so quickly I almost wondered if he was taking any of it in. He must have sensed me watching, or maybe he’d realized I wasn’t talking to Marone yet, because his eyes flicked up from the page to meet mine, and he lowered the paper.

“Two cases and zero suspects,” Thomas observed. “That sounds like your kind of luck.”

“And yours is any better?” I asked.

“It is when I’m not around you.” Thomas’s lips curled into a smirk. I remembered all the hairy situations we’d managed to get into, and out of, in the few years we’d known each other, from starting that war with the Reds to fending off hordes of zombies, and it made a fierce emotion like affection or pride burn in my chest. (Apparently danger gets my motor running. That might explain a thing or two.) I looked at his dancing eyes and the curve of his lips and thought about kissing him, but instead I just rolled my eyes and brought the phone up to my ear.  

“Hiya, John,” I greeted, projecting an obnoxious cheerfulness I didn’t feel. There aren’t many people in this city who address Gentleman Johnny Marcone by his first name, and even fewer who would do it in that tone of voice. Most of the people who’ve tried are probably dead.

There was a pause, in which I could imagine Marcone pinching the bridge of his nose or massaging his temples. “Mr. Dresden,” he said, his tone somewhat pained. “If you’ll recall, you contacted me. I did not expect to be kept waited when I responded. What is it that you wished to say?”

I hesitated, considering my words with more care than usual. I knew there was a chance that the police or FBI had the line wiretapped and were listening in, and while I wasn’t planning on making any illegal deals with Marcone, just talking to him civilly might be enough to make me look dirty, especially with our past involvements. My consultant work with CPD paid a hefty portion of my bills. I could have thought this through better.

“I’m waiting, Mr. Dresden,” Marcone said, “and I am a very busy man. Most people can’t expect this much of my time with three weeks’ notice.”

“Gosh, that’s flattering,” I replied, feigning sincerity. “I’m so glad to know that you would put your busy schedule on hold, just for little old me.” Thomas smirked at me from the other end of the kitchenette, and I flicked my eyebrows up playfully. 

“I’m waiting, Dresden,” Marcone repeated, his tone dry. “But not for long.”

“This is about your pal Quintin Edwards,” I said quickly, getting down to business. “A reliable source has told me that someone plans to rob him tomorrow night, and I’d like to offer my services as an investigator.”

“And you want me to be your middle man?” Marcone sounded amused. “That’s quite a proposal, Mr. Dresden. And in what way, precisely, does brokering this deal benefit me?”

“Well, for one thing,” I said, “you’ll be helping me prevent a warlock from killing a bunch of people and gaining a great deal of magical power.” Marcone said nothing, probably waiting for me to elaborate. I did.

“I know you, John,” I said. “You like being top dog on the streets, and you like knowing what other dogs are out there, so you have numbers to plug into your calculations. You don’t want a powerful dark horse coming up in your city. It’s better for you if I’m the only wizard around. You know I’m not trying to take your place.” Personally, I rather doubted this guy was either, but Marcone didn’t know that.

“You’re saying,” Marcone said pensively, “that you are the devil I know.”

“In a sense.”

“Be that as it may, Mr. Dresden,” he said, “I am first and foremost a businessman. If I am going to pave the way for you and Quintin Edwards to do business, I expect a more concrete form of compensation.”

“You’ll have to take that up with Edwards,” I told him, my voice sounding more self-assured than I felt.

“I’m afraid that’s not good enough,” Marcone replied. “I wish you the best of luck with your endeavor,”

I blinked. “Now, wait just a minute.” I hadn’t expected him to shut me down so quickly.

“I’m sure Quintin will be quite willing to hear you out,” Marcone went on, “once you’ve gotten through his lawyers.” He started to hang up the phone.

“Wait,” I demanded.

“I don’t believe there is anything left for us to talk about.”

“Dammit, wait,” I said.

“Good-bye.”

I ground my teeth. “Please.”

There was a pause, then, “I’m listened, Mr. Dresden.”

“What do you want, Marcone?” I practically snarled. My mind supplied images of violent magics worked on innocent people, potions to wipe the memories of witnesses, spells to destroy evidence.

“Information,” Marcone replied. It would have been appropriate for him to sound pleased, but his voice was just as cold as ever. I think it might have annoyed me more. At the very least it made me uneasy, like when a prey animal catches the scent of a predator on a distant wind.

“What kind of information?” I asked, putting very real suspicion into my tone to cover the fear. You don’t show fear to predators.

“I know your trade, Mr. Dresden, and I know what type of man you are. You wouldn’t be concerned over this potential theft without due reason, and you say that it’s connected to another wizard.”

“Warlock,” I corrected. “The ones who use magic for evil are called warlocks.”

“Very well, then, a warlock.” Marcone’s tone was dismissive. “What I want to know is how someone robbing Quintin leads to this warlock gaining power. Why is this potential theft of such concern to you?”

“You want to know why I care about someone trying to steal from Quintin Edwards?” I repeated, just to make sure.

“Yes.”

“That’s _all_ you want?” Thomas frowned at me from across the kitchen, and I shrugged back. I wasn’t sure where this was going either.

“Quintin is a friend,” Marcone said (I snorted, which he ignored), “and a valued business associate. Whenever you and your ilk are involved, things tend to become,” he paused as though searching for words, “hazardous, costly, and potentially fatal for other parties. I would regret it deeply if anything should befall Quintin Edwards.”

“And you didn’t want to help him before because?”

“I wanted to hear you say please.” Marcone did sound amused then, and it was all I could do not to slam the phone into its cradle and end the call right then. I had to take a few deep breaths before the red faded from my vision. Mouse came over from the living room and leaned against my leg, and I felt a little better.

“Do we have a deal, Mr. Dresden?” Marcone asked.

“Dammit,” I muttered. “Yes, we have a deal.”

“Excellent. Then as long as you fulfil your end of the bargain, I will take you to see Quintin tomorrow morning, and you can spend the day doing as you see fit to prepare for the burglary attempt.”

“I’ll need you to vouch for me and my methods,” I told him. “Like you said, you know the business I’m in; most people won’t believe me when I tell them what’s coming, or what’s necessary to stop it.”

“Yes, of course,” Marcone said dismissively. “I pledge to use all of my not-inconsiderable influence to convince Quintin that heeding your advice would be in his best interests. I’ll even ensure that he pays your consulting fee.”

Well. That was a pretty sweet deal, even if getting it had twinged my pride a bit.

And that was why I was suspicious of it.

“And what is Mr. Edwards doing for you that you’re this eager to keep him out of harm’s way?”

“Many things,” Marcone said, “the specifics of which are hardly necessary for you to know in order to protect him and his property.”

“I thought we were being _open_ with one another,” I said dryly.

“Candor was my stipulation, not yours. And seeing as you’ve already agreed to it, you have no room to bargain for more.”

He was right. Dammit.

I didn’t like this. For all I knew, Marcone’s interest in Edwards could be the same as my thief’s. He had gotten involved with relics of age and power in the past, and while his reason for wanting the Shroud of Turin had been surprisingly benevolent, I didn’t like the thought of Marcone getting his hands on an artifact used in blood spells. And frankly even if his connection to Edwards didn’t involve magic at all, helping Edwards could still come back and bite me if it would benefit Marcone.

Damage control, I told myself. Maybe I could arrange for the artifact to go mysteriously missing, to keep it from falling into the wrong hands- including the hands of the man on the phone with me now. Beyond that, there wasn’t a lot I could do, except warn Murphy that Edwards and Marcone might be in bed together on something big.

For the time being, I had to focus on saving lives, and the most immediate way to do that was to prevent thief number one from taking the knife and handing it over to a warlock. And in order to do that, I had to make this deal with Marcone.

“Fine,” I said shortly. “We’ll stick to the original deal.”

“As I thought, Mr. Dresden: you are a man of your word.” He sounded pleased. I sulked, until Mouse shoved his head beneath my hand for a petting. I didn’t like that Marcone considered me predictable. One of my greatest advantages in a lot of my past scuffles had been doing things the other side found unpredictable. If Marcone knew me that well, it made me uneasy for the day I would finally have to cross him.

“Now,” Marcone went on, “I do expect you to uphold your end of the bargain.”

“And you’ll take me to Edwards tomorrow morning?”

“Expect my car at your apartment at eight o’clock.”

I winced, both because of the early hour and because of the implication that Marcone already knew where I lived. It wasn’t like I made an effort to hide it, but still. It was the principle of the thing.

“Alright,” I said reluctantly. “The thief is after a magical artifact, a Mayan bloodletting knife.” I briefly laid out the entire plot regarding thief number one, including the sacrifices that would be used to power the spell involving the artifacts, and my previous encounter with the Fells. Marcone took in everything with a calm acceptance, and nothing of my story seemed to surprise or unsettle him. I suppose it was to be expected, given that I knew he had a Valkyrie on the payroll, but still, I was used to a little more shock and awe when I revealed information about magic and supernatural beings, and it was a little disappointing to hear him treat is as blasé. He asked pointed questions, drawing more information out of me in a way that reminded me unsettlingly of how Murphy talked to witnesses, and by the time I was done I was sure he had as good a picture of the situation as I did. Maybe better.

“Ms. Gard will pick your up from your apartment at eight,” Marcone told me when we were finished. “She will take you directly to Quintin’s home, and I will join you there.”

“Great. Can’t imagine a better start to the day.”

“I should inform you that Quintin will be hosting a small party at his home tomorrow night,” Marcone said, “and he is unlikely to change his plans even with the possibility of a crime.”

I blinked.

A party. People, tons of them, in harm’s way, not just from the rampaging Fells but from my magic as well. Hell, the only way I’d been able to effectively counter the last one I’d come across was to collapse an entire building on top of it. I didn’t plan on doing that this time around, but I still liked to have the option open to me.

“Well he’ll just have to cancel it,” I replied. “Hell’s bells, man, we’re talking about a monster that can tear people limb from limb! No way can there be any bystanders around.”

“Unless you want to personally send out cancelation notices, I don’t believe his plans will change between now and then. Quintin is a particularly stubborn man, much like yourself.”

“We’ll see how stubborn he is when I’m done with him,” I growled.

“I wish you luck, although I don’t imagine you will have any in this endeavor,” Marcone said, his tone reflecting a lukewarm amusement. “Quintin is notorious in his own circles for his refusal to be cowed by threats.”

I snorted, none too delicately. Normally I’d respect a man who doesn’t respond to threats on principle, but that doesn’t apply when I’m the one making them.

“In the meantime, Mr. Dresden,” Marcone went on, his voice turning cool, “you should be working under the assumption that there will be several innocent bystanders on the premises. I hope you can plan accordingly and defend against this attack without endangering them.”

I hoped so too.

“In addition, I’d recommend you not employ your usual wit around Quintin. He doesn’t tend to have the same patience for cheek that I do.”

“That’s what you’ll be there for,” I told him flippantly, because I could.

“One can only do so much,” Marcone replied, and for a moment I got the impression that he and Edwards might have butted heads in the past. Maybe Edwards was really the type of humorless old bastard who would refuse my help on principle if he didn’t like me. Maybe he was the type to put innocent lives in danger out of sheer contrariness. Maybe I’d tone the sarcasm down a bit tomorrow.

And maybe I’d sprout wings and fly.

“One is the leader of a highly successful criminal enterprise,” I pointed out. “One should try harder.”

“I suppose asking you to try harder not to offend would be asking too much,” he said wryly.

“A leopard doesn’t change its spots, John.” 

A less refined man might have snorted. Marcone simply said, “Indeed,” in a tone as dry as the Serengeti. I was privately very pleased with myself for getting under his skin. “If there is nothing more, I believe our business is concluded for the night. Until tomorrow, Mr. Dresden.”

He hung up, and I set the phone back in its cradle with a deep sense of misgiving.

Tomorrow, indeed.

 


	4. Chapter 4

I stared at the phone for a minute after hanging up. I could feel a headache coming on, and the day wasn’t over yet. I still had to call Murphy and let her know the game plan, and there were even odds as to whether my phone would make it through the call without disconnecting or dissolving into static. I’d spent more time on it today than I did in the average week, and I’ve learned that prolonged exposure can magnify my effect on electronics. That and emotions running high, which combined meant that the times when I needed it to work the most were also the times it was most likely to fail. Because why should anything ever go smoothly?

“That bad, huh?” Thomas asked me, and I realized I had been glaring daggers at the phone. Before I could answer, the offending device made a squealy sort of half-ringing sound that cut off into a rumble of static. I took a few steps back, watching the phone with a mix of apology and suspicion. It could probably sense my doubt and frustration, much like printers sense fear.

When the phone failed to ring again I chalked it up to magical interference rather than an incoming call, and I turned my thoughts to Thomas’s question. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Actually, he seemed pretty willing to work with me.”

Thomas tilted his head to the side, grey eyes thoughtful. “So you think he’s hiding something from you, because things are never this easy and a good businessman never gives something for nothing.”

“Exactly,” I said, punctuating the word with a jabbing motion of my finger. Another step took me out of our tiny kitchen into the living room, and I sat back in the easy chair with a sigh. Thomas came over and took the end of the couch nearest me, and Mouse joined us and rested his big doggie head on my knee. I rubbed his ears while I thought.

“I got Marcone to agree to the plan, and it didn’t cost me anything except the truth,” I mused out loud. “He’s even going to get Edwards to pay my consulting fee.”

“Definitely too good to be true,” Thomas confirmed.

“Well if it makes you feel any better, there’s bad news too.” I flashed my brother a wry smile, which he returned.

“ _In_ finitely better.” He emphasized the first syllable with a roll of his eyes. “We wouldn’t want things to be too easy. What’ve we got?”

My smile faltered and I scrubbed a hand over my face and back through my hair. “Edwards is having a party at his home tomorrow night, unless I can convince him to cancel.”

Thomas followed that statement to its obvious conclusion. “I suppose we won’t be collapsing any buildings this time around,” he said. “Pity. That’s always one of the most exciting parts of helping you out.” I eyed him incredulously and he responded with a wolfish grin, more a baring of teeth than a smile. I grinned back.

It’s not that I enjoy property damage, I swear. It’s just that I really, really like crushing my enemies with several tons of concrete, and who can’t say that, really?

“Marcone is sending a car at eight tomorrow morning,” I said. Thomas grimaced; we both knew it wasn’t going to be easy for either of us to wake up that early. “It’ll take me to Edwards’ home, and Marcone will be waiting there to vouch for me. And possibly bully Edwards into letting me do my thing.” The thought cheered me somewhat. It would be nice to have Marcone’s shrewdness and sheer force of personality working on my side for a change.

I considered what I could do to prepare after I’d arrived. I knew some spells I could lay that would detect magic in the house. It could tell when the Fell arrived, and allow me to track its movements. If the place was big, and it probably was, it would take time to set up the spell, but it would be necessary to keep watch over everything.

That said, knowing the Fell’s location was only the beginning; I needed to prevent the theft while also protecting Edwards and whatever partygoers showed up. I could place wards around the Mayan knife to keep the Fell or the thief from grabbing it, and place others around the rooms where the guests would be. It would probably be a large area, though, and putting a ward around all of it would take a lot out of me.

It might be possible to lay the framework for the spell, and then only activate it if I couldn’t manage to keep the Fell away from that part of the house. That would be better, since it would leave me with more power available to battle the Fell or the wizard who had summoned it. But if I wanted to avoid expending energy on solid wards, I would need to have a solid plan- evacuation routes for the crowd, and alternate routes to lead the Fell along, to draw it away from them.

Then there was the issue of actually fighting the Fell, which would probably become necessary once it realized it couldn’t get to the knife. Between the shield that the summoner placed around it and the risk to bystanders, my more combat-oriented magics would be worse than useless. If the warlock turned his pet on me I’d have to rely on steel alone. Still, my .44 revolver only held six rounds, and I’d never been much for swordplay. It would be hard to fend the thing off without magic.

Of course, Thomas would be there, and Murphy. Thomas’s sword skills were infinitely better than my own, and what Murphy lacked in magic or super strength she made up for with bullets, and a lot of them. Between the three of us we’d have a shot. Probably.

Bringing my allies to the battle might pose issues of its own. No doubt if Marcone and Edwards really were in some kind of deal on the wrong side of the law, they wouldn’t want a cop snooping around. And I didn’t want Marcone asking questions about Thomas, like who he was or why he was with me. Given the way he’d responded to everything I’d laid on him today, I wouldn’t be surprised if Marcone knew quite a bit about vampires. Enough to wonder why one was helping me, and maybe even enough to recognize Thomas as the White King’s ill-favored son. Considering the probable overlap between the White Court’s porn empire and Marcone’s crime empire, he may even be acquainted with Lara or Lord Raith themselves, and I really didn’t want him probing into my connection to Thomas.

Besides, the deal was for him to bring me, and me alone, to Edwards. Murphy would bulldoze right through that technicality, of course, but Thomas probably had ways around it that involved more finesse.

“I don’t know if they’ll let me bring someone else along, and they’d probably want to know why. You might be on your own for getting in,” I told him.

“Don’t worry about me.” Thomas waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll find my own way there, and meet you inside before our thief is scheduled to make an appearance. It’ll be simpler that way. Fewer questions.”

I nodded, glad we were on the same page. Thomas had managed to follow me into more than one dangerous situation in the past without my help or knowledge. I had no doubt that he’d manage to get into this one too, whatever methods he’d have to employ.

“I’ve got to make one more call to tell Murph what’s going down,” I said, planning aloud. “And ask if she has any new leads on thief number two. If she doesn’t, there’s nothing left to do but prepare for tomorrow.”

“What kind of preparations?” Thomas asked. “Enchantments? Potions?” I eyed him knowingly, and he shrugged. Thomas never seemed to tire of watching me work magic, as long as it was from the safety of my lab. He had seen me prepare potions a few times, and that process in particular fascinated him. Whenever I worked any alchemy I always invited him to observe, since he seemed to enjoy it and, wisecracks from Bob aside, I found I actually liked explaining to him the logic behind my chosen ingredients. Unfortunately for both of us, potions wouldn’t be much help in this situation.

“Not potions,” I said, and Thomas’s shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly in disappointment. It was one of those little things I never would have noticed or paid attention to before we’d moved in together, and I felt a little stirring of pride at how well I’d come to understand him. “Those won’t do a lot of good here.” I explained. “Neither will any enchantments I could lay on objects.”

“Please tell me you’ve got something,” Thomas drawled. “I thought you wizards were supposed to be good at beating long odds when you’ve got time to prepare.”

I scowled at him. “I’ve got something; I just can’t do much with it tonight. I can set up wards to protect the knife and the party guests. I can do some work on those tonight, but I can’t actually start laying them down until I get to Edwards’ place. Same for the spell to alert me when the Fell shows up. I’ve also been working on some spells for fighting faeries, but they’re as perfected as they can be until I test them against an actual sidhe.” I listed out all the things I couldn’t do until tomorrow, then sighed and leaned my head back against the chair with a thump that only aggravated my burgeoning headache. At this rate, I was going to end up pacing the living room in agitation until my body demanded to be put to bed. I hated not having anything to do except be anxious about a coming battle. It played havoc on my nerves.

Thomas seemed to know that I’d need a distraction, and he made me an offer. “If Karrin doesn’t have anything for you, how about we grab dinner at Mac’s?”

I nodded emphatically. “Good plan.”

Thomas shrugged. “I have them from time to time.” Then his mouth curved into a smirk. “More often than you do, it seems.”

I raised my arms towards the sky in a helpless gesture. “Why does everyone think I don’t have good ideas?”

“Because of your erratic behavior.”

“Hey, that erratic behavior has saved my life a few times,” I pointed out. “That makes it a pretty good thing from where I’m standing.”

“Hm. Fair point.”

Thomas’s expression was hard to place, but it was almost what I’d call fond, if I thought that was something he allowed himself to feel at all any more. The conversation lapsed into silence, and suddenly his gaze felt like a weight upon my chest. I patted Mouse’s head to disguise a nervous fidget, then a second later I stood up.

“Better call Murphy before it gets too late,” I said. “We wouldn’t want to hit the dinner rush as Mac’s.” Thomas snorted, because he knew as well as I did that a little hole-in-the-wall place like McAnally’s never had enough custom to describe as a ‘rush.’ He let the excuse stand, though.

I went back to the kitchen and dialed Murphy’s office number, since I figured that was where she would be. As it turned out, she wasn’t, or at least that number went to recording when I called it. I hung up and tried her cell, a little worried about the fact that I could barely hear Murphy’s recording message though the static.

I got Murphy on the cell, or at least I thought I did; the static garbled it when the person on the other end gave their name.

“Murph, I talked to Marcone. He agreed to introduce me to Edwards tomorrow morning.”

“What’s that?” She was shouting. “I’m in the station basement and the reception’s terrible. Who is this?”

The police station’s basement held copies of the paper records for all solved cases and unsolved ones that had gone cold without turning up any solid leads. If Murphy was there, she was probably looking for any crimes that had happened in the city that resembled thief number two. I hadn’t given her thief number one’s MO yet. That would mean having to tell her about the building I’d collapsed, and then she’d be upset with me. Better to do that tomorrow, when it would be perfectly reasonable for me to tell her to focus on the case instead of on how I was supposedly ‘a menace to the city.’

“It’s Harry, Murph.”

“Harry?” Murphy asked. Static blurred the edges of the name and made them hard to make out.

“Yes!” I had to at least try not to get annoyed. Doing that would only make the magical interference worse.

“There’s nothing new on this case. How did your call to your, ah, business partner go?” She didn’t want to say Marcone’s name. There were probably other people around her. Going through all those old case files was at least a two-person job; more it you were going back several years.

“Good,” I told her, projecting my voice into the phone like my middle school drama teacher had tried to teach me to do on stage. “He’s taking me to meet Edwards tomorrow.”

“You’re going to see Edwards tomorrow?” Murphy parroted back.

“Yes! Marcone agreed to help me.”

“He agreed?”

“Yes!”

Thomas was making choked off noises like strangled giggles from the living room. I flipped him off without looking and the choking turned to full-bodied laughter.

“When are you meeting Edwards?” Murphy asked. Or at least I assumed that’s what she asked; from my end it sounded like “we are eating words,” but that didn’t make any sense.

“Marcone’s picking me up at eight tomorrow. We’ll probably get to Edwards’ house by eight-thirty or nine.”

“Harry, I didn’t hear any of that!”

I slapped my forehead with my free hand. Thomas laughed more. It was a lovely sound, full and rich and bubbly, genuinely gleeful in a way that was kind of endearing. That only added to my frustration, and I rubbed my forehead above my eyes where I could feel the headache building.

“Nine. AM.” I told Murphy, separating the words and annunciating clearly.

“Nine?”

“Hell’s bells, Murphy, yes, nine AM! Nine! Yes!”

“There’s no need to yell, Harry,” she said reproachfully. I could hear her every word clearly and crisply, and I suppose she’d heard mine just as well. The phone had picked a fine time to start working properly. I sat in the lone chair that served as a dining area and laid my head on the kitchen counter.

“So, nine,” Murphy went on. I grunted into the phone. “Will that be at Edwards’ house?”

“Yes,” I told her wearily.

“Okay. I’ll meet you there.”

“See you,” I replied, and hung up the phone. I was too tired of wrestling with the connection to try to explain the terms of my deal with Marcone, or the party Edwards was throwing. I would tell Murphy all of that when I saw her tomorrow morning.

Thomas came to join me in the kitchenette. “Phone acting up on you?” he asked innocently. I groaned in answer and crossed my arms around my head so that they blocked out the light.

A soft touch on the back of my neck made me tense on instinct before I realized that it was Thomas’s hand. Simple human contact of the comforting variety had been a rare occurrence in my life of late: the only time anyone touched me was when they were trying to hurt me.

“Tense?” Thomas asked, and his hand squeezed the stiff muscles of my neck in a way that was positively delicious. I felt myself relax, more from the recognition that the touch was not a threat than from anything else. This was unusual behavior from Thomas; he normally avoided casual touches like the plague. For all we’d lived together almost a year and a half, I could count on one hand the number of times he’d initiated any type of physical contact.

I didn’t dare bring that up, though. It might make him pull away, and that was the last thing I wanted. There was a lonely, aching part of me that craved touch, in an instinctive way that had little to do with even my attraction to Thomas. Human beings were not meant to live our lives alone. The last time someone had touched me this much without murder in mind had been an illusion woven by Lasciel to sneak past my defenses. The time before that was years ago.

I mumbled an affirmative to his question and hoped that wouldn’t be the end of it.

Thomas placed both hands on my shoulders. He pressed down, and I couldn’t have described exactly what he was doing with his fingers; only that it was heavenly. I sighed in contentment as I felt my body melt beneath his hands in a way that had nothing to do with sex. He pressed a sore spot and I hissed in pain, then groaned when the tension left the muscle as he released it. Thomas chuckled, a sound that was totally different from his earlier laughter. Deep, rich, like velvet or chocolate, even if the comparison was a bit overdone. He massaged my neck and shoulders for a few more blissful moments before easing off my back, then lightly ruffled my hair with one hand. “You want any more, you’ve got to pay for it,” he informed me.

“I’m not tipping for this one,” I mumbled, not lifting my head from where it rested on my folded arms. The headache that had been threatening since I’d arrived home had receded. I couldn’t feel it at all.

Of course Thomas has magic hands. Why would I expect anything different?

I tried not to sulk too much, and definitely not to think of what else Thomas’s hands could probably do. You should be grateful for what you have, Harry. Lord knows you don’t deserve it.

“So what did Murphy say?” Thomas asked me. “Aside from asking you to repeat everything?”

“Nothing new on the other case,” I replied. “So we’re still on for Mac’s. She’ll meet me at Edwards’ tomorrow at nine.”

“Alright.” Thomas patted my shoulder, then moved away. I head the slight rustle of fabric that I assumed was him putting his shirt back on. “I’m going to walk Mouse again, and then we’ll go to dinner.”

“Yeah. I’ll stay here while you do that.” I still hadn’t raised my head from my arms, and I didn’t plan to.

“Just don’t fall asleep on me there,” Thomas said. “I don’t want to have to cook dinner myself. There’s nothing in the fridge.”

“If you shopped more often, maybe there’d actually be something in the fridge,” I told him pragmatically.

“Yes, I suppose that’s generally how these things work.” I head him go to the door and clip on Mouse’s lead. “Still, don’t fall asleep, or you’ll miss dinner. I’m not cooking for you, and I’m not bringing home a doggy bag.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Thomas and Mouse left. I waited until I’d heard the heavy security door squeak closed before I forced myself to stand up. My shoulders twinged in protest; they didn’t want to work so soon after being able to relax. But I had other problems to worry about, namely the one in my pants that would have to be fixed with something other than the usual cold shower. I didn’t have time for all of that.

I stumbled into the bathroom, turned the ‘cold’ knob on the sink all the way open, and stuck my head under the icy stream without preamble. The shock of cold made my body tense right up, undoing all the work Thomas had done in the last few minutes to relax me. But it also undid the effect he’d had on other parts of my body, so I figured it was an even exchange.

I grabbed a hand towel and tossed it over my shoulders before I turned off the sink and straightened up. Water ran from my hair onto the towel, dampening it even before I lifted it up to pat my head dry. I ran a hand over my jaw and concluded that I needed a shave. Normally I’d have done that in the morning, but I’d been a bit distracted then. Besides, doing it now would give me an excuse for having my hair and the collar of my shirt wet.

I got out my shaving cream and razor, and accomplished the chore in less time and with less blood than most men would manage with a straight blade and no mirror. I don’t trust electric razors, and I don’t like to have mirrors in my home for the same reason I make sure not to leave hairs behind in the sink and to burn or bleach anything I bleed on. Too many things can get to you that way. Thomas had been indignant when he realized he wouldn’t be able to check his hair in the morning, and after some arguing I’d finally agreed to keep a small fold-up mirror in one of the bathroom drawers, though I rarely made use of it myself.

I finished up and went out into my bedroom. I was debating changing my shirt for something dryer when I noticed the pair of rings resting on my dresser. After a moment’s consideration, I picked them up. My left hand didn’t work so well since the fire, so it was difficult to put the rings on and take them off. I had worn the first one for almost a year after my injury without removing it, but a few months ago I’d enlisted Thomas’s help to take it off in order to have it free to examine while I modeled the second off of it. I hadn’t worn either of them since then, because of how hard it was to put them on, but I wanted to have them in the coming battle. Even if it meant having to ask Thomas to put them on for me, which would probably be awkward at best. (I just hoped that the improvised ice water dunk had put Little Harry down for long enough that he wouldn’t get any ideas.)

The rings were magic, but they weren’t a focus for spells in the same way my staff and blasting rod were. They were enchanted for kinetomancy, the manipulation of force. They stored a little energy every time I moved my arm, and could release all of that force at once in a concussive blast when I activated them. They wouldn’t have much of a charge on them now, but I could put more into them by going a few rounds with the punching bag hanging in the corner of the living room. It would be something, at least, and it might give me an edge. The rings hadn’t been very effective against the Fell in our last encounter, but they were the kind of thing that came in handy if you wanted to, say, destroy some building supports in order to bring the roof down on something. Not that I planned on doing that. Maybe the sorcerer summoning the Fells wouldn’t have thought to shield himself as well as he did his pets, and I’d get the chance to take a swing at him. Either way, I’d rather have them and not need them than the other way around. I dropped both rings into my pocket and went out to the living room to wait from Thomas and Mouse.

I wasn’t waiting long before the door opened again, making a horrible squeal of metal on metal as Thomas shoved it open. He unclipped Mouse’s lead and the dog trotted into the house, going straight for his food bowl. “Ready?” Thomas asked me. He left the door open while he went into the kitchen to refill Mouse’s food and water.

“Ready,” I confirmed, standing up from the couch. We met at the open door just as Mister, my big grey tomcat, appeared at the top of the stairs leading down to the entrance of my basement apartment. He cleared the steps in a single leap and then bowled into my legs, his usual affectionate greeting. Mister is just shy of thirty pounds of cat, and not a lot of that is fat or fluff. I wobbled on my feet, and Thomas laid a hand on my shoulder to steady me. I adjusted my stance, bracing myself against further assault, then knelt down and scratched Mister’s chin and ears. He purred, eyes closed in kitty bliss, whiskers pushed forward. After a few moments he pulled away and gave himself a shake. I stood. Mister wound his way around my legs in a way that threatened to make me lose my balance, but before I could bend down to pet him again he left off on the rubbing and walked past me into the apartment with a haughty flick of an ear.

“Cats,” I muttered while Thomas closed the door behind my imperious feline.

“It’s just how they are,” Thomas said. It had taken a good two months for Mister to get used to it when Thomas and Mouse had moved in, but he’d warmed to Thomas more than I’d seen him warm to anyone else. He didn’t greet Thomas the way he did me, but on nights when I worked late in my lab he would sleep across Thomas’s legs on the couch (he did this even when Thomas had a human bedmate, a fact that seemed to amuse Thomas more than irritate him). For his part, Thomas seemed to take a sort of pride in winning my cat’s approval (as well he should) and accepted the occasionally inconvenient affection more readily than I might have expected. I had to admit, it made me a little jealous. Mister used to wait up for me when I worked late.

Thomas locked up and we started towards where the Blue Beetle was parked on the street outside the boarding house. I remembered the rings in my pocket after I’d sat down in the driver’s seat, and decided to wait until we’d gotten to McAnally’s to ask Thomas to help me with them.

The drive there was short, and quiet given neither of us had much to say. I never turned the radio on; it rarely gave me anything but static anyway. I parked in the small lot around the building that housed McAnally’s pub in the basement and a few tenement rooms in the upper floors. Like my apartment, the entrance to Mac’s pub was below street level, and there’s no billboard announcing its presence. McAnally’s got its advertisement through word of mouth only, which meant it tended to attract a very specific type of clientele.

McAnally’s pub was neutral ground under the Unseelie Accords, the laws that governed interactions between the various political entities of the Nevernever, and also the White Council of Wizards. Beings of all types were free to come and go as they pleased, as long as they didn’t start trouble. Even if people there realized Thomas was a vampire, it wouldn’t matter; he had as much right to be there as anyone. We had run into each other there a few times in the past, including the night we had encountered the Fell Wolf for the first time. It was a place that tended to draw magical types: human practitioners, werewolves, changelings, and occasionally less human things too. There was something about it that felt safe, familiar, in a way that not much in our technologically advanced and hyper-rational world feels to those whose lives have been touched by magic.

The atmosphere was undoubtedly designed to cater to the eccentricities of human practitioners. There are no televisions in McAnally’s; no background music or jukebox either. There’s an old player piano in the corner, and every now and then someone will go tickle the ivories and give us all a smile. A couple tables have black and white squares set into them for chess or checkers, though patrons are obliged to bring their own playing pieces.

As Thomas and I entered, I instinctively ducked my head to avoid the ceiling fans. There are thirteen of them, low-hanging, and I’ve never been hit by one but I’ve always felt like the risk was there. The colors in McAnally’s were warm earth tones, comfortable-looking browns, muted greens, the occasionally dull yellow or red lit up, at that moment, by the dark golden light of early evening that poured through thirteen windows set high in the walls and reflecting off of thirteen mirrors of varied shapes and sizes placed around the room. Thirteen wooden columns, stained dark with smoke and carved with reliefs depicting creatures from various mythologies, broke up whatever negative energy might gather around wizards sitting and brooding at any of the thirteen tables, and thirteen worn and comfortable stools stood at the bar.

In case you haven’t figured it out, wizards are pretty keen on the number thirteen. It’s an important number for working magic, the ideal number of participants in multi-wizard spells and the ideal number of repetitions of the magic words to do a big spell. If mortals think it’s unlucky, that’s probably due to its association with wizards. We’ve had a bad rap in the past.

Thomas and I ordered at the bar before sitting down at one of the empty tables. The place was unusually populated, with seven of the barstools and five other tables being occupied. A whole six people were gathered around one table, leaning their heads close together and muttering, while a pair of elderly men and a pair of young women both played chess at the black and white tables. A young man I knew by sight but not name was playing something melancholy on the piano. No one was looking at us, which was a welcome change of pace; normally I couldn’t take Thomas anywhere without all eyes being drawn to him (and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me a little jealous, not _of_ him but _over_ him). Not so in McAnally’s. People tended to mind their own business in this community.

I took the rings from my pocket and laid them on the table. Thomas had been watching the young ladies playing chess, his expression dark with something I didn’t want to think about, but he noticed my movement and turned back to me. He looked at the two silver bands and raised an eyebrow. “Why, Harry, is this a proposal? I’m no expert, but I think you’re supposed to get down on one knee.”

Over his shoulder I saw one of the group of six at the other table raise her head to look over at us, though whether her attention was drawn by Thomas’s word or his natural magnetism I couldn’t tell. “Can it,” I said, but there was no force behind the words. “You know what these are for.”

Thomas’s smile disappeared. “You think you’ll need them?”

“I think I want to have every weapon in my arsenal going up against this thing,” I replied, remembering how I’d wished for my other weapons in the moments when we’d been boxed in with the Fell advancing on us, injured but still very much a threat, and very, very angry. Thomas nodded slowly, his expression darkening as he remembered. I knew he was probably thinking of how he’d had to feed off of me to get us out of there, and probably feeling guilty for it.

Thomas picked up my right hand from the table, holding it in his left while he took one of the rings in his other hand and slid it onto my ring finger. I’d expected the shiver of lust that ran down my spine, but not the bittersweet memory that surfaced unbidden in the next moment. I could see my own hands, sweaty and just a bit trembly with nerves, fumbling a dinky little diamond ring onto Susan’s finger while I begged her to stay with me and work things out. I’d skipped the whole ‘on bended knee’ thing altogether, though I don’t think it would have made a difference if I hadn’t. She turned me down. I’d seen her only once since then, and it wasn’t to reconcile. I guess that’s what you call closure.

I swallowed hard, forcing back the sudden rush of emotion.

“Harry?”

I blinked, surprised to find tears threatening at the corners of my eyes, and looked up at Thomas. He was watching me, brows drawn with concern. He still held my hand between both of his, and he gave it a gentle squeeze.

“I’m okay,” I insisted. “It’s nothing.”

“If you say so,” Thomas murmured, for once not pushing me. “Where do you want the other one?”

“Index finger, same hand,” I told him. My voice went from shaky and threatening to crack to hoarse but solid in the span of the sentence.

Thomas obliged, sliding the second silver ring over my finger. His hands were a bit cold, his touch a bit hesitant, and his fingers slid against mine as he pushed the ring into place. Normally having Thomas touch my hand like that would have been sending lusty shivers through my body, but it seemed that sorrow did as good a job of suppressing my libido as cold water did. I wondered which hopeless romance would torture me more in the end: the one with the woman whose life I had ruined, or the one with my half-brother.

Thomas squeezed my hand once, tightly, offering comfort in the only way he could. Then he laid it back down on the table and his hands slid back from mine. I had a passing thought of grabbing his wrist and entwining my fingers with his, but he’d pulled away before I could make up my mind to do it, and I let the thought die.

I pulled my hand back off the table and straightened in my chair, clearing my throat more loudly than was strictly necessary and casting my eyes around the room before looking back to him. “So,” I said, scrambling for a conversation topic and finally coming up with one. “Who were you calling earlier?”

“Better if you don’t know,” Thomas said, some of the usual cockiness creeping into his tone. “Suffice to say it’s for your case, and I’ll be finding my own way into the millionaire’s mansion. I won’t even have to make deals with any mob bosses to do it.” He smirked, a little smaller than usual, but I returned it with a smile. He was still worried about me, still watching his step, and I wanted to show him that there was no need. That I was fine. Maybe if I kept projecting it, it would actually become true.

“No mob bosses, huh? What other kinds of connections do you have?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” His smirk was more genuine now.

“I certainly would. What’ll it take to get it out of you?”

Thomas hummed thoughtfully, his eyes scanning over me almost hungrily, and hello, looks like my libido had shaken off the sadness and was wide awake. “More than you can afford, I think.”

I probably should have said something coy and seductive, but all I came up with was an indignant outburst of “Hey! I’ve got money!” Thomas arched an eyebrow and said nothing. I rolled my eyes. “Which one of us has a job, here?”

As soon as the words left my mouth I regretted them. I knew that not being able to keep a job was a sore spot for Thomas. He hated being unable to do things other people considered simple, and he hated having to ask for my help to stay on his feet. The arrogance he’d shown me when we first met had been mostly an act, but he did have a lot of pride. That pride had taken quite a few beatings since he’d left the White King’s mansion.

“Oh, you’re going to bring that into it?” Thomas seemed more amused than offended, so I didn’t apologize.

“You’re the one who brought up personal finances,” I reminded him.

Thomas’s self-deprecating smile shifted subtly into an enticing smirk. “I wasn’t talking about finances,” he said, his voice low, and the mood abruptly swung from cautious joking back to thinly veiled seduction. I was going to get whiplash at this rate.

I wished I could tell whether this was genuine flirting, or just Thomas being Thomas and me projecting my unrequited emotions onto him.

Our order was up, and the subtle tension between us shattered when we went to the bar to pick it up (Mac doesn’t employ servers, and he has far too much dignity to run around taking orders or dropping off food.) When we sat back down at our table, the mood seemed to have cooled off. We kept to safe topics for the remainder of the dinner, and then went out together into the Chicago night.

The drive home was short and quiet. Back at the apartment, I went down into my lab and started looking through one of my old notebooks, the one I kept protective spells in. The spell I’d worked out earlier had been to protect the knife from the thief; this time I needed something to protect the party-goers, and to alert me to the Fell’s presence in a way that wouldn’t incite panic. With a little help (okay, maybe a lot of help) from Bob, I chose some spells and made the appropriate modifications. I jotted them down in my notebook, in case I ever needed them again, and sketched the runes of the spells out on a piece of loose leaf paper that I planned to carry with me- messing up a spell can have deadly consequences, and there was no sense in entrusting my life and the lives of everyone in Edwards’ mansion to my memory. (As it was, Bob made me correct a few things as I was copying, screaming that if it weren’t for him I’d end up leveling a few city blocks.) The whole process took about an hour, most of which was writing. I also wrote down the names of the books Bob wanted me to buy, since he refused to give me any help before I’d done that, but I left the list on my desk when I left the lab.

Back in my bedroom, I set out what I’d be taking with me to Edwards’ mansion the next day, since I knew I’d be too groggy to think clearly in the morning. I leaned my sword cane against a chair and threw my leather duster across the back of it, my .44 back in its proper place in the inner pocket and my blasting rod on its leather thong inside. I tucked the paper with my spells written on it into another pocket, then checked the rest to make sure they still had my usual tools: chalk, string, painter’s tape, play dough, and a few other odds and ends. I finished up by adding a little something I’d been experimenting with to one of the other pockets, then turned my attention to the more delicate part of the preparation: what to wear. 

I’m not the sort who hobnobs with millionaires on a regular basis, occasional alliances with Marcone notwithstanding, and this Edwards sounded like a stickler for propriety. If I wanted any hope of getting into his good graces I needed to make a good first impression, and while my manner would be a big part of that, so would my clothes. I didn’t have a lot to work with, so if I wanted to get it right I had to pick carefully, and I probably ought to ask Thomas for his advice.

So naturally I pulled the first things that didn’t clash too badly out of my closet and tossed them over the chair. As it turns out, it was a pair of dark jeans I knew were a few inches too short in the leg and a red and white checked shirt. Since it seemed I was destined for the cowboy look, I went ahead and added my leather boots to the ensemble. Classy.

My supplies were assembled, everything I would need for the following day, and it was only eight o’clock. Much too early for bed, even if it would be an early morning. I drummed my fingers against the back of the chair I’d laid my things out on, feeling a nervous energy starting to grow within me. I knew I’d only end up pacing the floor if I didn’t do something to get rid of it, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and charge my force rings at the punching bag.

Thomas was reading one of my worn paperbacks by firelight when I came out into the living room, his shirt discarded once again and his legs tucked up underneath a blanket. I saw him glance up at me once, but he didn’t say anything when I started in on the bag with a few practice swings, even though it made a lot of racket.

After taking a couple swings with my right fist bare, I paused and looked down at my hands. The left was bent into its usual half-curl, the burnt flesh of my fingers hard and numb. I pulled off the leather glove I wore over it, then used my right hand to gently force the fingers of the left into a loose fist. I taped them into place with care and slid a boxing glove onto the closed fist. I used my teeth to hold the right glove.

I wasn’t planning on using my left hand for much any time soon, and certainly not for throwing any punches, but the medical examiner who had served as my _de facto_ primary physician for the past year or so had advised me that I needed to exercise the arm attached to it, or it would atrophy. I didn’t have time to go to a gym or the money for proper physical therapy, but whenever I had a go at the punching bag I made sure to use my left arm as much as my right.

I tested the arm out with a few light jabs, alternating with my right and progressively increasing the amount of strength behind the blows. I had plenty of nervous energy to pound out, and a good incentive to do it since at least some of that would be going into my rings. I don’t know how long I kept at it. Hours, probably. A layer of sweat started to form on my skin as I worked, making my shirt cling to my back, and my breath came in heavy pants.

I paused for a moment to catch my breath, wiping sweat from my forehead, and felt a prickling sensation at the back of my neck. I was being watched.

I glanced over my shoulder to find Thomas staring at me, his pale grey eyes almost luminous in the shadows that had fallen as the fire burned down. He had set aside his book and was watching me openly, almost hungrily, his body perfectly still and his eyes unblinking in that unnerving way that vampires get when they’re concentrating on something.

I suppressed a shiver and turned back to the punching bag, throwing another jab at it. I tried to focus on the movement of my body, the sensation of the impact in my arms, but I could still feel his gaze on me like a physical thing, brushing against all of my senses. I was hyperaware of his presence, his gaze, and it made it impossible to concentrate. My blows against the punching bag began to falter and my body flushed with a confusing combination of embarrassment and eagerness. My mind kept coming back to the image of his eyes, the longing I knew I’d imagined in his gaze, and it started churning out fantastic and somewhat paranoid ideas, like the possibility that Thomas found my sweat-slicked body too tempting not to stare at. Of course, there was more than one way for a vampire to be tempted, but the other way didn’t bear thinking on. For that matter, neither did the first, though that had never stopped me.

One of my jabs landed badly, skidding off the curve of the bag, and I temporarily overbalanced and wobbled on my feet. I was frustrated, exhausted, and on edge with nerves that were only partially from worry about what the next day would bring. I rounded on Thomas, glaring at him, and crossed my arms over my chest. “Stop staring at me!” I probably sounded more like a petulant child than anything else, but that was neither here nor there.

Thomas’s mouth twitched in a half-smile that I almost missed in the shadows. He gestured broadly to the couch and to the blankets and pillows spread out upon it. “You’re the one going ten rounds with a punching bag in the corner of my bedroom. I’m waiting for you to finish; or did you expect me to sleep through that noise?”

I felt a flash of guilt at the words. He was right, and as usual I was reading way too much into his actions. Thomas needed sleep, and I was keeping him from it. There was nothing to it besides that.

I shifted from foot to foot and glanced away, wiping at my forehead again with the back of one arm. “Okay,” I said, “how about you take the bedroom for tonight? I’ll sleep out here when I’m done.” Thomas had “borrowed” my bed before, mostly with the ladies he brought home, but my mind latched onto the idea of him lying between my sheets and conjured up a fantasy of him naked, waiting for me. I wondered if my pillow would smell like him when I reclaimed the bed the next night.

Thomas, oblivious to my less-than-fraternal thoughts, considered my proposition for a moment and then nodded. He stood up from the couch, giving me a lovely view of sculpted abs thrown into vivid contrast by the darkness and dying firelight. (He doesn’t even go to the gym.) Thomas went over to my bedroom but stopped in the doorway and turned back to me. “Don’t stay up too late,” he cautioned. “Tomorrow starts early.”

It was true enough, and I knew he was just trying to make sure I’d be alright. But I can’t accept that kind of genuine expression of concern without trying to deflect or make a joke out of it. It’s a guy thing. “What are you, our mom?”

He shook his head at me, a wry smile on his face. “Just trying to look out for you, little brother.” He turned away from me and went into the bedroom, leaving the door cracked just a little.

I went back to the punching bag, giving it a few half-hearted jabs. After a few minutes Mister got fed up with waiting on me and he leapt down from his perch atop my bookcase and slipped into the bedroom. I kept at it, my body exhausted but my mind overactive, still spinning wild tales but always coming back to the image of Thomas’s intense eyes and the sensation of his gaze upon my body.

 


	5. Chapter 5

I woke up to the clamorous ringing of my Mickey Mouse alarm clock. It was the old-fashioned kind with a wind-up knob and real metal bells, since anything electric would probably fail on me, and it made a noise to wake the dead. I groaned and swung out an arm aiming for my nightstand, but came up with empty air and barely avoided swinging myself to the floor. A spike of adrenaline rushing through my veins, I pushed myself up on my arms and blinked at my surroundings. It took me a minute to recognize the living room for what it was; I'd forgotten that I had slept on the couch the previous night.

I located the alarm clock and reached it with a bit of straining, pulling it into my lap to turn it off. When it was silenced, I leaned back against the couch with a sigh. I had been up until probably around one in the morning beating the tar out of my punching bag, and there were few things I wanted more than to roll over and go back to sleep. Unfortunately for my exhausted brain, one of those things was to prevent an evil wizard from stealing an old knife and sacrificing several people to gain godlike power. I had to get up.

I held the clock in front of my face and squinted up at it, noting rather dourly that it was set for seven in the morning. I hadn’t gotten it from my bedroom last night, so Thomas must have woken and brought it out for me. He’d even changed it from my usual time (nine AM) to give me an hour to prepare for Marcone’s car. I briefly considered setting it half an hour later and trying to get a few more winks in, but I knew that wouldn’t do me much good. What I really needed was some coffee.

With my priorities so ordered, I heaved myself up from the couch and stumbled into the kitchen to start a pot of java. I only narrowly avoided tripping over Mouse where he slumbered in front of the oven, which was fairly impressive considering how big an obstacle he presented. While the coffee brewed my body automatically went through the motions of refilling my pets’ food and water bowls, and the sound of the kibble rattling around woke Mouse where the alarm clock had failed. I filled a mug as soon as there was enough coffee in the pot, adding plenty of sugar to render it drinkable. I sipped it slowly, and little by little my brain started to work again.

I was still in the clothes I had sweated through the previous night, though at some point I’d had the wherewithal to remove my gloves and untape my left hand. I sniffed a sleeve of my shirt and confirmed what I’d already known: I badly needed a shower before I even thought about getting ready to meet Marcone and Edwards.

I finished my first cup of coffee and left the mug next to the pot. The bedroom door was still cracked, probably so that Mister could come and go. I pushed the door open and slipped inside without a sound.

The bedroom was dark, and I had to wait a moment for my eyes to adjust before I was able to make out Thomas’s sleeping form. He lay curled up and pressed to one side of my bed, like his body was too used to sharing space with another person to spread out. Mister was lying in a beach ball-sized lump of fur at the small of Thomas’s back, but as I watched the two of them my cat rose to his paws and stretched. I went over and gave Mister’s ears a scratch, listening to his familiar purr. Thomas shifted in his sleep. I froze, waiting to see if I had woken him, but he settled back down with a sigh. His face was covered by one arm and a curtain of dark hair, and for a moment I regretted not being able to look upon him in the one time when there wouldn’t be any consequences.

Mister grew impatient with my stillness and jumped down from the bed. He departed through the door I had left open, presumably to get his breakfast before Mouse could eat it. I remembered my priorities and went to collect the clothes I’d laid out the previous night, then retreated into the bathroom. I started the shower almost apologetically, knowing that it would probably wake Thomas. I showered as quickly as possible to reduce the disruption, then shaved, dressed, and tried to put my unruly dark hair into some semblance of order. I even checked my reflection in the little folding mirror I’d gotten for Thomas. When I figured I’d done the best I could I donned my silver pentacle amulet and checked the contents of my duster pockets once more, then left the bathroom.

The noise had woken Thomas, as I’d known it would, and he was watching the door when I came out. With one hand he pushed a few long curls from his face and then propped his chin up to look at me. His hair was in disarray, his eyes bleary and squinted with sleep, making him appear almost less-than-perfect in a way that was oddly disarming. I would never call a vampire cute to their face, but in that moment he looked it. “You leaving?” Thomas asked, covering a yawn with his other hand.

“I’m leaving,” I confirmed. “Go back to bed. The fun won’t start until dark anyway. No need for vampires to be running around in the daylight.” He grunted, squeezed his eyes shut, and then focused on me a little better when he opened them again.

Thomas looked me up and down, taking note of my attire. “Go get ‘em, cowboy,” he said with a sleep-rough voice and a little grin. I chuckled and answered him with a casual salute. Thomas snorted. I picked up my sword cane from the chair and slid on my boots, all the while feeling his eyes on my back. It reminded me of last night, made me a little uneasy. I tried to work fast. I was about the leave the room when he called out to me again.

“You sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

I turned back to my brother. “Ramirez said this thing has never hit before six, so you’ve got plenty of time for more beauty rest,” I said. “And Murphy will be around to keep an eye on me, so you can sleep easy.”

“I’d sleep better if you took Mouse.”

“That’d go over well,” I drawled, imagining showing up to Edwards’ mansion with my dog. I could clearly picture the way Marcone would purse his lips as he asked himself why he was working with me and wondered how he would explain the dog to his business partner. Well, maybe it would be worth bringing Mouse just to see that for real.

“Don’t do anything reckless,” Thomas ordered.

“Aww, mom,” I whined, a grin pulling at my lips. “All the other kids are jumping off bridges. You never let me have any fun.” Thomas rolled his eyes at me.

“I’ll call Karrin in a few hours and check in with her.”

“You don’t trust me,” I complained.

“Not by a long shot. Feed the animals before you go.”

“Yes, dear.” Another eye roll from Thomas.

“And leave some coffee in the pot.”

“Yes, dear.”

“And don’t forget your glove.”

I looked down at my burned hand. “Right.” I tried to remember where I’d left it. Probably by the punching bag. “Is that everything?”

“My cell is on.” Thomas waved a hand at where the phone sat on my night stand. “Call if you need anything. I’ll be there before six, so don’t start the party without me.”

“That depends on Edwards,” I told him, and we shared a look of exasperation that the millionaire would put people’s lives in danger out of sheer obstinacy. “I’ll see you tonight,” I said. Thomas nodded with finality, then rolled over in the bed to face away from me and pulled the blankets up over his head so that they blocked out the early morning light seeping through the high windows of my room. I took the hint and left, closing the door softly behind me.

My glove wasn’t by the punching bag, but a few moments of searching turned it up in the crevice between a corner of the room and one of my bookcases, along with a washcloth and two mismatched socks. The crevice was perfectly cat-sized and Mister sometimes liked to pull soft things over there to sleep on, though I wasn’t sure when he’d made off with my glove. I knelt down and picked all of it up, then looked over my shoulder to see my cat watching me from the back of the couch, disapproval clear in his expression.

I held up the glove. “I need this. You can keep the rest, though.” I replaced the socks and washcloth on the floor, then turned back to Mister. “Alright?” Mister twitched an ear in acknowledgement and leapt down from the couch. He padded past me to the crevice and started putting his nest back in order. I pulled on my glove and retreated.

Mouse was waiting for me by the door, and a glance at my alarm clock still lying on the couch confirmed that I had some time before Marcone’s car would be there. I clipped the lead to Mouse’s collar and took him out to do his business. He seemed to understand that we weren’t going for our usual morning run today, since he didn’t try to drag me down the streets like he normally did when he thought I wasn’t keeping up like I should. Mouse always seemed to understand what was being said around him, and given he’d been near at hand whenever I told Thomas about the case I wasn’t really surprised that he knew today was different.

We got back to the apartment and I had a second cup of coffee and a bowl of Froot Loops with milk (courtesy of the band of brownies who kept my place clean and my kitchen stocked, though they had some strange ideas about what constituted a balanced diet). It wasn’t Wheaties, but I figured it would get the job done. I put the rest of the coffee in a thermos to take with me and started a second pot for Thomas. It’d be cold by the time he woke up, but at least it would be there.

The sound of a car horn outside made me jump a little. Before I bothered questing out with my magical senses to see what was there, I turned to look at my pets. Experience had taught me that they had a better sense of when danger was coming than I did. Mouse and Mister were both watching the front door, ears pricked to catch every sound. What was left of Mister’s bobbed tail was twitching lazily, and although Mouse was standing at attention his fur lay flat against his back. Something was coming, but they didn’t read it as a threat.

I checked the clock again. Five ‘til eight, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Sigrun Gard, Marcone’s head of security, was overly punctual like that. I grabbed my sword cane and went to the door, reaching it just as someone knocked on the other side. Mouse sidled up to me. I put a hand on the thick ruff of fur at the back of his neck. “Stay,” I said, even though I knew he didn’t need the order. If there wasn’t any danger, Mouse wasn’t going to jump on our guest. If there was, my words wouldn’t stop him at all.

I opened the door on Gard herself, a tall woman almost of a height with me, though rather more athletically built. Like Murphy she wore a pantsuit, one gun worn openly on her hip while others were concealed at her shoulder and one ankle. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a bun. She had apparently been about to knock again, because her hand was raised in front of me.

I stared at the hand, then glanced at her face without really looking at her eyes. I knew she had set up a ward around Marcone’s house a few years back that had given Bob a lot of trouble, which was no easy feat. Gard had power and skill, more than enough to be dangerous, and while hand motions aren’t strictly needed to control magic, I didn’t like having her fist extended towards me. Now that I thought of it, she probably had a hell of a right hook too.

Gard smiled icily and lowered her hand. “Mr. Dresden,” she greeted, her tone bored. “I have been instructed to bring you to the private estate of Mr. Quintin Edwards.”

“Right,” I agreed. I looked back at my dog. “Mouse, stay. Watch the house while I’m gone.” The dog made a low, worried noise and cocked his head to the side, giving me a look that could only be described as skeptical. “I can’t take you on this one, boy,” I told him. “But I can handle it myself. Stay.” Mouse heaved a sigh and turned away from the door. He went over to the couch and flopped down over the blankets I’d slept on, then looked back and watched me with worried doggie eyes. I shook my head at him. What did it say if even the dog didn’t think I could handle myself alone for a few hours?

Gard was watching me, her expression so carefully close to neutral that I barely read the amusement and incredulity there. “He understands when you talk to him,” I explained, knowing it sounded about as probable as saying he ate homework. Gard gave me a tiny, coldly polite smile and turned to look back at the car waiting for us on the street, a sleek black limousine that looked incredibly out of place next to my battle-scarred VW bug.

I stepped out of my apartment, closed and locked the door behind me. “Alright then,” I said, loudly. “Let’s get a move on.”

Gard led the way up the steps in front of my door and to the limousine. She opened one of the doors and held it for me. I eyed her dubiously. She stared back, her expression devoid even of amusement. I thought I understood a little better in that moment why it annoyed Murphy so much when I tried to hold doors open for her.

Instead of arguing with Gard over the appropriateness of a lady holding the door for a gentleman, I decided to be the bigger person and go along with it. I thanked her and stepped into the car, pulling the hem of my duster in after me before she slammed the door. Gard got behind the wheel and we started off.

The limousine’s interior was a scene of such sophistication that I felt out of place within it. I was struck by the sudden urge to check that I hadn’t tracked in mud on my ridiculous cowboy boots, but I fought it down. The seats were a gorgeous expanse of black leather, the dark wood accents so well polished I could see my reflection in them. A bottle of what looked like scotch and two crystal glasses were held securely in a series of hollows set into the polished wood of the mini bar. The car smelled faintly of leather polish and expensive cigar smoke, dark and luxurious and masculine.

But the elegance of the car was only half of what was there; it was built for function too. My eyes picked out the subtle logo scratched into the bottom corner of one of the windows that proclaimed it made of bullet-proof glass. A glance under the seats confirmed the presence of both personal flotation devices and Kevlar vests- for the water evacuation under fire, I supposed. There were at least a dozen mostly-hidden caches that could, and probably did, hold weapons. I checked one to test my hypothesis and found two fully automatic handguns and extra clips for them, along with half a dozen canisters with pull tabs that I judged to be tear gas grenades. Maybe Gentleman Johnny had been a boy scout growing up; he’d certainly taken the ‘be prepared’ motto to heart.

I replaced the cover without disturbing the weapons. Touching them might have disrupted any number of things in the sophisticated guns, and while the thought of Marcone reaching for a weapon and finding it useless was somewhat gratifying, I consider myself to be above intentional sabotage. Maybe I could tip Murphy off later, though if Marcone thought I’d found the illegal weapons he’d probably move them before she could get a warrant together. I couldn’t tell if the divider in the limo was a one way mirror or not, if Gard was watching me rifle through Marcone’s weapons stores, but I wasn’t particularly worried about what she might do to me if she was watching. After all, I was a guest.

We reached Edwards’ mansion before I lost my self-control and gave in to the urge to look through all of the weapons caches just to check what was in them (I’m endlessly curious, which is a valuable trait in an investigator but a lot less so in a wizard trying to stay out of trouble). The house was outside of the city proper, with a wrought iron gate at the street and a driveway long enough that it obviously wasn’t just for parking cars in, but short enough that the house could still be seen from the road. The yard was neatly manicured and dotted with old growth trees, small benches or little fences set beneath them. The only flowers were near the house itself, which was a four story affair of grey stone with white trim on the doors and windows. It had a wrap-around porch decorated with Corinthian columns like the portico of an ancient temple, and which probably had more square footage than my entire apartment.

It was gorgeous, to be sure. But it was no Marcone mansion or Chateau Raith, and that cheered me somewhat. I had wrecked nicer places than this.

John Marcone and Quintin Edwards were waiting for us at the door of the mansion when Gard let me out of the car. Marcone looked as he always did, his ageless face betraying no emotion, green eyes the color of dollar bills cold and calculating. His bodyguard, a big brute of a man I had dubbed Cujo, stood to his left and a little behind him. Edwards was older, which I only knew because I’d seen Murphy’s files on Marcone and his associates, but he looked every day of it. His hair had been black once, but was now a salt-and-pepper mottling that leaned more to the salt than the pepper. He wore a beard, trimmed short to give him a sophisticated look. He was of average build and slightly greater than average height, and stood with the perfectly erect posture of a man who had spent at least some of his youth in the military. His face was creased with lines, most of them from frowning. His eyes were a steely dark grey, and they narrowed suspiciously as he took in my appearance.

Marcone nodded to us in greeting and Gard slipped past me to take up a position at his elbow opposite Cujo, leaving me standing alone before them. I was a little nervous, given all that was riding on this, but damned if I was going to let it show. So I did what I do best and went with the direct approach.

I barged right up the steps to stand in front of Edwards and stuck out my hand to him. “Mr. Edwards, my name is Harry Dresden. I think I can be of some assistance to you.”

Edwards eyed my hand, his mouth pinching like he’d bitten into a lemon, then looked back up at my face. I dropped my hand but held his gaze for as long as I could without risking a soulgaze, then focused on his nose. I didn’t want this man to think I wouldn’t look him in the eye because I was weak. 

“John tells me you believe you can prevent a theft on my property,” Edwards said, looking past me at Marcone.

I turned slightly so that I could see both of them, and that was when I noticed the two men who had been standing just next to the door of the mansion, behind Edwards. They were perfectly, disquietingly still, like they were trying to appear as furniture instead of people. They were the same build, had the same hairstyle, the same black sunglasses, same plain black suit and tie and white shirt. I knew they had to be private security, probably from a mortal agency rather than Monoc Securities contractors like Gard, but there was something about their soulless, uniform appearance that reminded me disquietingly of the agents in _The Matrix_. I suppressed a shudder and then turned my attention back to Marcone and Edwards.

“John tells you right,” I said, directing a slight smirk at Marcone. He always seemed distantly offended when I used his first name, so I wanted to see how he reacted when I said it in front of Edwards. Marcone just blinked at me, looking like he’d resigned himself to my disrespect. I frowned. It was no fun if I couldn’t get a rise out of him.

“I’m afraid you needn’t have come, Mr. Dresden,” Edwards said coolly. “I have private security, well-trained men who I am certain are far more capable of handling any such threat than an,” he looked me up and down with distaste, “independent contractor, such as yourself.”

“I’m sure the Agents Smith over there,” I hooked my thumb at the men standing by the door, and they both stiffened slightly, “do just fine as a first line of defense against Jehovah’s witnesses and the odd girl scout selling cookies, but how well do you think they’ll handle themselves against a seven foot tall wolf monster that can shrug off flamethrowers and get up from a five story fall without a scratch?”

Edwards’ eyes narrowed, and he turned from me to Marcone with an expression that said “look at this maniac; why have you brought him to me?” Marcone returned it with an even gaze, and Edwards’ expression went from annoyance to confusion. “I’ve dealt with Mr. Dresden before, Quintin,” Marcone said evenly. “He is impudent in the extreme, and wearisomely stubborn, but he does not lie about matters such as this, and his methods are very effective.”

Edwards’ face had turned a slightly purplish color. I wondered absently if he had high blood pressure. “You ask me to believe that this madman is telling the truth about some sort of fairy tale creature threatening my home? I had thought you a rational man, John.”

Marcone’s eyes flashed with annoyance, but it didn’t show on his face any more than that. “I am rational enough to acknowledge that there are things in this world which science cannot yet explain,” Marcone said slowly, “and practical enough to seek information about such things on their own terms. Mr. Dresden advertises himself as a wizard, and I have never had any reason to believe he is anything less than what he claims.”

Edwards threw him arms up. “By God, John, this is madness!” (“I’m still here,” I muttered under my breath. I think one of the guards might have chuckled, but it could have been a cough.)

Marcone’s jaw shifted slightly as he clenched it. It was fascinating to watch. Marcone was getting annoyed, but he wasn’t letting it show. He was a cold, rational man, and I hadn’t seen him get angry often, but those times I had he hadn’t bothered trying to conceal it from me. Not like he was now, with Edwards.

“Quintin,” Marcone said, “I ask that you humor me by allowing Mr. Dresden to do as he feels is necessary tonight. It will not inconvenience you by much, and if it turns out to be unnecessary you will have my most humble apologies.”

My eyebrows shot up. There wasn’t much Marcone did humbly, and I had never heard of him apologizing. It was obvious that he was annoyed by Edwards, maybe even actively disliked him, but he was trying to be civil and keep their relationship on good terms. That meant that Edwards, or something he could only get through Edwards, was extremely valuable to Marcone. Interesting. I would definitely have to tell Murphy about that later. She might have some idea why Marcone was so determined to play nice with Quintin Edwards.

Edwards had crossed his arms while he considered the proposal, but finally he relented and held up his hands. “Very well, John, since you insist upon it, I will allow this man into my home. But I will have him monitored by a member of my security staff whenever he is out of my sight, and I most certainly will not pay him, nor will I change any of my plans for tonight’s events due to his preposterous theory.”

I sighed and resigned myself to another _pro bono_ job. If there hadn’t been so much risk to innocent third parties, I might have walked away then and there, and let Edwards suffer for his skepticism.

“It isn’t good business to expect something for nothing, Quintin,” Marcone argued, surprising me with his support. His voice took on a lightly teasing note. “Consider it a wager: if my faith in Dresden is well-founded, you will compensate him; if it is not, I will open our contract for renegotiation.”

That meant nothing to me, but it certainly seemed to mean something to Edwards. His eyebrows shot up, then sank down, and I could see the gears turning in his head as he considered the deal intently. He made his decision quickly and shook hands with Marcone. His steely eyes gleaming with greed and his confidence that he’d gotten the better end of the deal showed clearly on his face. By contrast, Marcone’s expression was cool, confident, his smile almost shark-like. I imagined any poker game between the two of them would end with Marcone as the victor, regardless of the cards dealt.

Marcone and Edwards started talking business, in vague and almost coded terms that I couldn’t make sense of. I sidled up to Gard and started making small talk. “They don’t seem to get on that well, do they?”

Gard glanced at me from the corner of her eye. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to respond, but then she said, “My employer has often said that dealing with Mr. Edwards is only slightly less annoying than dealing with you.”

“I hold the place for most annoying? Well, I’m honored, really.”

Gard’s lips tilted in a slight smile, but her eyes were on Marcone and Edwards, not me. “Why does he put up with him, then?” I asked. Gard’s smile fell. She didn’t answer. I kept talking, filling up the silence with my words. “I mean, I know _I’m_ valuable for my skills, but Edwards doesn’t seem that bright, and he’s not that rich. Not compared to Marcone, anyway. And Marcone doesn’t strike me as the type to suffer fools.”

That got another smile out of her, but she fought it down and turned to me. “Enough, Mr. Dresden. My employer is engaged in a business venture with Mr. Edwards, all completely legal and above-board, and that is all you have any reason or right to know.”

I glanced back at the two men. “I also know that Edwards thinks he got shafted in their original deal and wants to make a new one. What’s that about?”

“Circumstances which have changed since the signing of the contract in ways no one could have predicted,” Gard replied, perfectly vague. Maybe I was imagining it, but it seemed like she was implying that Marcone had known how circumstances would change, or had engineered that change, and had planned from the beginning to get the upper hand on Edwards.

“But Marcone still wants to stay on Edwards’ good side,” I mused. “So maybe there’s still more left to get out of him?”

“More than he knows,” Gard said. I raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t elaborate. I was left wondering what exactly Marcone wanted from Edwards, because it was sounding less and less like a partnership and more and more like a hostile takeover that the overtaken party had yet to realize was hostile. I didn’t think I’d get any more out of her, but what I had was plenty to chew on.

“So,” I said, changing the topic, “can I count on your help in dealing with this monster, madam head of security?”

Gard turned to me fully now, with a grin like a cat shows a mouse. “I’m afraid not, Mr. Dresden. I must stay with my employer, and he will not be in attendance at Mr. Edwards’ party tonight.”

I blinked. “He won’t?”

Gard shook her head. “Considering the outside threat, as well as your tendency towards destruction of property, I have advised him that it would be safest to be well away from this place tonight. Mr. Marcone agreed with my assessment.”

“So he’s leaving me to handle it myself,” I said, feeling somehow resentful. I hadn’t really planned on having help from Marcone, but I was still mad that it wasn’t being offered.

“You are the one who came to him wanting to defend this place, Mr. Dresden,” Gard reminded me. “You cannot blame him for leaving you to do as you intended.”

I frowned, but there was nothing I could do to make Gard or Marcone stay on. How perfectly like Marcone, to manipulate the situation so that his business venture, or whatever asset Edwards represented, was protected while he himself didn’t have to lift a finger. Though, I admitted, he hadn’t had to do much manipulating. Gard was right: I had come to Marcone with an offer, laid all my cards on the table, and that had left me with exactly zero negotiating power while Marcone knew everyone’s hand.

I noticed Gard lift her chin as she looked past me, and I turned to see Edwards and Marcone shaking hands once more. It seemed they had concluded their business. “Best of luck to you, Mr. Dresden,” Marcone said to me. “I trust that my confidence in you will not prove unfounded.” It came off as a subtle threat, which I was sure was what he’d intended, and I scowled at him. Marcone returned it with a polite, icy smile. Then he motioned to Gard and Cujo, and they followed him down the steps of the porch to the limousine. Cujo held the door for Marcone and got in after him while Gard once again took the wheel, and the car drove off down the long driveway and disappeared down the road.

Edwards turned back to me, his face set in the same lemon-biting pinch. “Come along then, Dresden. I must prepare for an event I am hosting tonight and I do not have time to observe whatever fraudulent magic tricks you intend to perform in my home.” He started towards the door, and one of the Agents Smith opened it before him. I fixed him with a scowl he couldn’t see. It seemed that Edwards was a skeptic of the highest order. So maybe I’d give him a little demonstration of what he was dealing with.

“Hey!” I barked. Edwards turned back to me, his expression haughty and annoyed. I rapped the tip of my sword cane twice on the wood of the porch at my feet, making a satisfyingly loud noise, and ran a spark of will through it. Not enough for anything big, since I wanted to conserve energy, but enough that the enchantments for earth magic set into the cane sent out a wave of magnetism that rattled the bolts in the porch and made it tremble beneath our feet. I held Edwards’ gaze, gambling that he would get uneasy and look away before a soulgaze could begin. He did.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” I said, my voice pitched low and menacing. “There are so-called psychics who do scam exorcisms and fake palm readings. I’m not among them. I’m a wizard, not so subtle but very quick to anger, and I don’t take kindly to being treated like a charlatan. I’m here because there’s more riding on this than you know, but piss me off and I will tear your home down brick by brick and leave it in a pile of rubble around your ears.” Edwards was staring at me in stunned silence. I sneered and stormed past him and through the door, my leather duster billowing dramatically behind me.

That’s one of the reasons I love this coat. When you need to make an impression like that, a sweater just doesn’t cut it.

Edwards recovered from his shock and scurried in after me, then got in front of me before I’d had the chance to look around much. He drew himself up, trying to intimidate, but he was at least seven inches shorter than me, and the effect fell flat. “Whatever you may be, Mr. Dresden, this is my home, and I won’t have you speaking to me like that.” I raised an eyebrow and lifted my sword cane, the tip hovering a few inches from the floor. Edwards flinched almost imperceptibly but stood his ground. “Nor,” he went on, “will I allow you to wander around unsupervised. Mr. Bishop is my head of security. I will leave you to him.” Edwards nodded to one of the Agents Smith, I wasn’t sure which, and then departed a little faster than was strictly necessary.

I turned to the Agents Smith, looking from one to the next. They didn’t look very impressed, which was annoying, but they weren’t openly skeptical either. Actually, they didn’t show much emotion at all, nor did they speak. They were almost identical, and neither seemed to want to put himself forward as Mr. Bishop. I sighed.

“Okay, Agent Smith, Agent Jones,” I pointed at them in turn with my cane, making the assignments arbitrarily. It earned me a raised eyebrow from Jones, a tiny smirk from Smith. Neither of them said anything, though, so I kept going. “I need you to gather all the other agents so I can give them a crash course on what we’re dealing with. How many of you are there?”

They exchanged a look, then Jones took off in the opposite direction from where Edwards had gone. Smith turned back to me. “Thirty guards,” he said. “Extras were brought in for the event tonight.”

So some of the staff might not be as familiar with the layout of the mansion. That wasn’t very comforting, considering I was going to be relying on them to help me get the civilians to safety.

“They have experience with evacuations?”

Smith shrugged minutely. “Bomb threats, fires, gunmen. They’re trained for any scenario.”

That cheered me a little. There may be hope yet.

“You got a map of the house?” He produced one from within his jacket and handed it to me. It was already marked out with red dots. “These where the agents are being stations?” I asked, and he nodded. “Show me the rooms where the party will take place.

“The main ballroom, here.” Smith gestured to a large room on the first floor. “And the dining hall.” He indicated another room. “There are bathrooms here and here, and the caterers come through and set up in the kitchens, here. Aside from those areas, the rest of the house should be empty tonight except for members of the security staff.”

I nodded. It was a big area, but I could probably put a ward around it if I needed to. I’d just rather avoid it.

“Got a pen?” I asked. Smith did. I took it and settled the map on a decorative table to one side of the atrium, then started marking out the circumference of the circle I would use for the wards, the places I would set my web to detect the Fell’s arrival, and the fastest exit routes. I spoke as I drew. “I’ll leave the evacuations to you and your boys. I assume with all their fancy training they’ll know the fastest routes?”

“They should have already memorized the evacuation routes for any scenario,” Smith assured me. I think he might have been a little offended by the suggestion that his men might not be prepared, but I didn’t worry about it too much.

“And where does Mr. Edwards keep the Mayan ritual knife he recently acquired?” I asked.

If Smith was disconcerted by my knowledge, he didn’t show it. “Here,” Smith said, pointing to a room on a different level on the map. “In the private gallery.” It was on the opposite end of the house from the dining hall, and two stories up. I let out a sigh of relief.

“But it won’t be there tonight,” Smith added.

I glared at him. “Why’s that?” I had a sneaking suspicion of what he was about to say, but I hoped I was very wrong.

“Mr. Edwards acquired the artifact with the help of several art authenticators, museum board members, and other members of the Chicago Historical and Art Society,” Smith explained. My heart sank. “This event is to thank them for their assistance, so of course the knife will be on display in the ballroom.”

I groaned, rubbing a hand over my face. “That self-absorbed, pig-headed old bastard is going to get a lot of people killed!” If Smith had an issue with me talking about his boss that way, he wisely kept it to himself. “What are the chances of getting him to move it back?”

“Vanishingly slim,” Smith replied. I snarled and spat out a litany of vulgar words in a series of dead languages that I’d picked up from Bob over the years. Smith regarded me with wary amusement, and said nothing.

By the time I had finished, Jones was returning with the other agents, all of them more or less identical to the first two. I counted, just to be sure, and there were indeed thirty of them including Jones and Smith. They all stared back at me through the same mirrored black sunglasses, and it was damned unnerving.

“Okay, agents,” I said, my tone forcibly chipper. “You don’t know me, and if you’re lucky you won’t see me again after tonight. I’m the specialty team that got called in to deal with a new threat. There’s going to be an attempted theft on Mr. Edwards’ property tonight.” I saw them stiffen a bit, like dogs catching the scent of a prey animal. They wanted to take up the challenge.

They’d be slaughtered if they tried.

The White Council doesn’t like wizards to tell mortals about magic, and particularly not about magical beings. The official stance, the one we take even with mildly talented practitioners who come to us for training, is that the Nevernever and all its inhabitants don’t exist. Even when the Council is at war, our enemies wouldn’t dare to expose us, and by extension themselves, to mortals. The witch burnings and monster hunts of previous centuries are burned into the collective memory of the magical world, and threatening exposure to the general public is like threatening to drop a nuclear bomb: mutually assured destruction.

That being said, I’d learned that the best way to keep people from being killed by a magical threat is to help them prepare for it. There were times I’d concealed information and it had led to deaths that could have been prevented. So even if it made the White Council angry, I had no qualms about telling these men what they’d be up against.

“I’ll tell you this straight: the culprit isn’t human. It’s a monster right out of the horror movies, a thing called a Fell Wolf, and none of you has half a chance against it.” The agents shifted on their feet, glanced at one another, even murmured a bit. They couldn’t quite decide if they were skeptical or offended. I pushed on. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“I’m a wizard, and I’m going to be handling this thing myself.” God, I hoped I wasn’t going to be handling it myself. If Thomas and Murphy didn’t make it inside, I was screwed. For that matter, where was Murphy? Surely it was nine o’clock by now.

“What I need from you is to keep the party guests safe.” I held up the map that I’d drawn exit routes on. “Plan A is to get everyone outside when the threat arrives. I’m leaving that to you security boys, got it? I know some of you will be in other parts of the house, but when this goes down I want you to leave your posts and help with the evacuation. Get people moving quickly and calmly out of the house. I don’t care what you’re trained for; when this thing comes, you leave it to me. Its target is the Mayan knife in the ballroom, not the guests, so with any luck we’ll be able to get everyone to safety without it pursuing them.”

“Which brings me to Plan B. If this thing decides to go after people instead of art, we’re going to have to shelter in place. I’m going to set up protective spells around the ballroom and dining hall, and if the monster comes near I’ll activate them. In that case, I need you to keep everyone calm and back from the walls of the spell until I tell you it’s safe. At best, if they touch it, they get a mild shock. At worst, the shock kills them, and the wards break down and the monster kills everyone. And nothing ruins a party like a lot of unnecessary bloodshed.”

They were staring at me now, quietly, and I was fairly certain they were all thinking I was nuts. I didn’t care as long as they remembered my orders and could follow them once things went to hell. I’d be vindicated soon enough.

“Alright!” I clapped my hands. “Any questions?” Silence greeted me. I was sure they all had things they wanted to ask, most of it variations of “are you for real?” but none of them were willing to speak.

“Okay, if that’s everything, back to your places! I’ll tell you when things go down whether we’re on Plan A or Plan B.”

The agents stared at me for a few seconds, then turned to one another and exchanged glances and murmurs. One of them, a bit younger than the rest by what I could see of his face, was watching me, not responding even when one of his fellows tried to draw him into conversation. Looking him over I noted that he showed a subtle mark of originality in the form of his cufflinks: they bore the iconic shape of the bat signal, all in black, with the form of the bat slightly raised against the circle of the cufflink. It wasn’t the type of thing designed to draw attention; unless you had the trained eye of an investigator, like I have, you wouldn’t have noticed them.

He was also wearing a gun in the open, while most of the others had theirs hidden in shoulder holsters, maybe to avoid scaring the guests. His belt had several pouches hooked to it, and it reminded me so much of a patrolman’s belt that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a pair of handcuffs and a billy club.

I went over to the young agent. “Got any glow sticks in that utility belt, batman?” I asked. His head tilted to the side a little, and I’d bet if I could have seen his eyes he would have blinked.

“Two of them,” he said after a moment, when the surprise of being singled out had worn off.

“Standard issue?”

He shrugged. “Everyone on the security staff has them.”

“Good.” I nodded. “This guy likes to cut the power, so you’ll probably need them.”

Batsie didn’t bother asking how a wolf monster managed to cut the power. “Light the way for the guests while they’re evacuating. I’ll pass it along,” he assured me.

I turned to Jones and Smith. “Whichever one of you if Bishop, relate everything I just said to Edwards when you get the chance. He needs to know the game plan too.”

“What will you be doing?” Smith asked me.

“Setting up protective spells,” I replied, folding the map up and tucking it into my duster pocket. It would be useful for one of the spells I had in mind, and also just for finding my way around the place; I didn’t have the time or inclination to memorize exit routes like the agents had. “But first, what time is it?”

“Quarter to ten,” Jones answered. I frowned. Murphy was very late, and that wasn’t like her at all. Of course, there could have been a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. Maybe she’d been caught in traffic on her way here. Maybe there had been another theft by thief number two, or some other high profile case had come up that required her attention.

Or maybe something worse had happened.

“I need to make a phone call,” I announced to Smith and Jones. “I don’t suppose there’s a landline with a connected handset around here somewhere?”

Smith and Jones exchanged a glance, then shrugged. I grimaced. After how my last conversation with Murphy had gone, I wanted whatever advantage older technology could give me when making my call.

“The one in the kitchen is connected,” Batsie volunteered, and the older agents and I turned to look at him. He flushed slightly, apparently embarrassed at having shown himself to be eavesdropping, but he pressed on. “I can show you where it is.”

“Good,” I said. “Lead on.” Batsie nodded to me and we left down one of the corridors, leaving the milling group of confused security staff behind us.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Batsie led me to the kitchen through a circuitous series of corridors and large open rooms, and as I took in the scenery I also took a moment to be glad that I had taken Agent Smith’s map: if I hadn’t, I probably would never have been able to find my way back. The windows throughout the mansion were covered with heavy drapes, and although I knew it was a bright spring morning outside it may as well have been evening for all the light that got through. The furniture was also dark, wood and leather and heavily patterned fabrics that had discolored with time, though the shadows hid most of the damage. It was all old, probably dating back to the time when some relative of the current Edwards’ had made the family fortune. The overall effect was one of generational wealth that was starting to run out, which only brought more questions about the nature of Marcone’s business with Edwards.

“So,” Batsie asked me as we walked, “why a corded phone?”

I glanced at him, wondering if he was just making small talk, or amused by my apparent eccentricity, or genuinely curious. It was hard to gauge his expression with those sunglasses, though, so I couldn’t tell which it was. “Magic interferes with technology,” I explained. It couldn’t hurt anything to tell him the truth; not after the revelation I’d just made to a room full of security guards. “Newer things tend to act up when wizards try to use them.”

“How do you do anything?” Batsie asked, amazed, and I laughed.

“An old car, an old phone, a lot of candles, and paperbacks for entertainment,” I told him.

“I don’t think I could do it,” he replied, and almost subconsciously lifted a hand to pat his jacket over one of the inner pockets, where I assumed his cell phone must be kept.

“You’ve had technology all your life,” I told him pragmatically. “I’ve been messing it up since I was thirteen, when I started making progress with my training. I’ve spent more of my life having to work around technology than I have being able to use it.”

“You get used to it, is what you’re saying.”

“Something like that.”

There was silence for a moment, then he asked, “So is that how you get to be a wizard? Training?”

I shrugged. “It’s how you get the official title. The talent is natural- either you have it, or you don’t.” I paused and considered it for a moment. “Maybe those who don’t develop their gift don’t have as much trouble with technology. I’ve never asked.”

He seemed to be turning that over in his head. I hit on what I thought was the source of his curiosity, and I grinned. “Were you hoping I could teach you how to do magic?”

Batsie’s sunglasses obscured his eyes, but I could see the blush on his cheeks. “Maybe a little.” Then his mouth sort of twisted and he laughed at himself. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. Hell, common sense says you’re just a showman here to make a quick buck. I shouldn’t make myself a mark.”

I shrugged. “A lot of people think that. Your buddies certainly seemed to. But we’ll see who’s right before the night is over.” Batsie frowned and nodded, going quiet.

I had met people like him before, those who didn’t have talent of their own but wanted to believe that those who did existed. Most of the time, they freaked out just as much as the magic-deniers when confronted with something supernaturally scary, especially when their pop culture protective measures didn’t actually stop whatever was coming after them.

We came through to the kitchen, where the caterers were already setting up in anticipation of the party. The scene reminded me of an anthill that had been stomped on by a bratty kid, boiling with frenzied movement, tons of people swarming around. Batsie led me through the room, and we managed to slip past the frantic caterers without disrupting them too much. The phone was in one corner of the room, safely out of the bustle of activity. It was an older model, not quite as old as my rotary phone, but old enough that I thought I had a pretty good chance of getting it to work.

Batsie stuck around while I dialed Murphy’s cell number. He stood off to one side, like he was waiting for me to be done so he could lead me back. He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand, then started wiping the glasses on his shirttail. I got a better look at his face then, while I waited for Murphy to pick up. He had a classic sort of handsomeness, strong jaw, strong cheekbones, serious dark eyes and well-coifed dark hair, exactly like you’d picture Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne. The nickname was going to stick.

Murphy picked up at last. “Detective Karrin Murphy. Who is this?” She sounded drained and annoyed, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

“It’s Harry, Murph. I’m at Edwards’. What’s keeping you?”

“Larceny, White Collar, and Special Crimes were having a joint briefing on the Nevernever thief, and they tried to cut Special Investigations out of it.” There was a growl in her voice, and I immediately understood her anger. As the head of the Special Investigations Unit, which scraped the bottom of the barrel for both officers and cases, Murphy was often treated dismissively by the other branches of CPD. Whenever there was any kind of joint investigation she had to fight tooth and nail to get any kind of cooperation from her fellow officers.

SI wasn’t a well-respected squad within CPD. It was a place they kicked the people they wanted gone but couldn’t fire, and the cases they’d rather sweep under the rug than deal with themselves. Those put in charge of SI never lasted long before they were forced to retire or did so voluntarily. Murphy had been there longer than anyone, in part because she faced the strange things in SI’s case files head-on instead of trying to pretend they didn’t exist. She’d turned a dead-end career and a band of misfits into as skilled a supernatural taskforce as ever existed outside of Monoc’s mercenaries and the White Council’s wardens. But none of that made it to the brass (people would probably end up on forced psychiatric leave if they tried to send unsanitized reports up the chain of command), so none of her superiors took Murphy or SI seriously.

“So you barged in and gave them what for, huh?” I said, grinning at the idea of Murphy storming into the briefing room with her eyes blazing.

“So I didn’t find out about it until it was half way over, and didn’t get there until it’d been done for five minutes,” she replied wearily. “But I definitely gave Johnson a chewing out when I got there.” I grinned. Johnson was the leader of Special Crimes, and he and Murphy had crossed paths a couple times in the past when something that was SI’s bag also involved famous people or places. He was the sort that liked to take all the glory, and didn’t mind bullying smaller departments to do it. He’d once visited Dough Joe’s, the gym where Murphy practiced aikido, and tried to show her up in the ring. It had done my heart good to see tiny Karrin Murphy tossing big bully Rick Johnson to the ground a couple times.

“But it’s all over now, right?” I asked. “You can come meet me?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, Harry,” she promised.

“There’s something you need to know first.” I told her about Edwards’ party, and how the knife would be on display in the middle of the gathering.

“Arrogant son of a bitch!” Murphy hissed. “Doesn’t he realize people could be killed?”

“I don’t think he believes it’s a credible threat,” I told her. “So from his perspective there’s no reason to change his plans.”

“Bullshit,” Murphy snarled. “You’ve warned him, Marcone’s warned him, and he just disregarded all of it. If someone so much as stubs a toe evacuating, I’ll have him charged with reckless endangerment.”

“Let’s focus on making sure nothing worse than a stubbed toe happens,” I told her. “You can worry about having him arrested later.”

“Damned right I’ll have him arrested,” Murphy muttered. “I’ll be there as soon as I finish up with the crime lab. They said they’d gotten something from our museum crime scene, and I want to hear it before Johnson does."

“That’s fine,” I assured her. “There’s not much to do here yet except lay down some protective spells.”

“And give Edwards a piece of my mind,” she added.

“Good luck with that,” I said. Murphy snorted.

“If that’s all, Harry, I’ve got work to do.”

“One more thing, Murph,” I said, an idea suddenly striking me. “Can you rent me a tux?”

“Excuse me?”

“This party’s gonna be a formal affair. I’d rather not look too out of place.”

“I’m not your mother, Harry; I’m not going to buy you clothes.”

“I said rent, not buy! C’mon, Murph, you can take it out of my payment from SI when I help you catch the museum thief.”

She made a growling sound that came through the phone as static, then muttered, “Fine. But I’m taking a handling fee out too.”

“Fair’s fair,” I replied good-naturedly. I planned on adding the expense to the tab I’d give to Edwards in any case, so I could afford to be a little generous if it would spare Murphy’s pride.

“Anything else I can do for you, Harry? Press your shirts, pick up a quart of milk?”

“I have Thomas for that,” I told her, and realized only afterwards what the words seemed to imply. Murphy snorted but didn’t comment, for which I could only be grateful.

“But you know, Murph,” I added cautiously, “you might want to consider dressing up, too. It’ll probably make the guests uneasy if you’re walking around dressed like a cop.”

“I’ll wear my nicest pantsuit,” she replied, her voice dripping with scorn.

“That’s not really what I meant.”

“I’m not wearing a dress on a case, Dresden,” she snapped. “And have you ever tried to run in heels? Play James Bond if you want; I won’t be Pussy Galore.” Hearing Murphy say that word, I couldn’t help it: I laughed. Murphy hung up on me. I laughed some more. Batsie stared at me, one eyebrow raised, and I just shook my head and grinned.

“Okay,” I said when I’d composed myself. “Let’s have a look at this ballroom.” Batsie nodded and led the way, replacing his disconcerting sunglasses as we left the kitchen.

The ballroom was exactly what its name made it out to be, a cavernous room with vaulted ceilings and a wide expanse of smooth wood floor. What appeared to be a small symphony orchestra was setting up on a stage at one end, and tables and chairs had been set against the walls. I’d once visited the Winter Lady’s court when it was arranged like this, the musicians humans she had enslaved with the promise of playing better than they’d ever dreamed, the dancers the heart-achingly beautiful sidhe lords and ladies. This place didn’t come close to the beauty I’d seen there, thought to be fair few mortal constructions could.

The Mayan knife was in a display case by the door. It was a wickedly curved thing made of volcanic glass, shiny and sharp even centuries after its making. I approached it, holding out my left hand to feel for energy. There wasn’t any, not in any of the forms I recognized as such, but something about the knife made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I got the sense somehow that it was hungry for blood, and if handled would inevitably slip from the hands in exactly the right way to cut a finger while making it look like an accident. I was glad that it was safely behind the glass case; I wouldn’t want to touch it accidentally.

I grabbed a chair from one of the tables and pulled it over, then got a felt-tipped pen and a handheld black light from the expansive pockets of my duster. I turned to Batsie. “Want to help me with the magic?”

His eyebrows rose a bit behind his shades. “Sure.”

I tossed him the black light. “Climb up on that chair and shine this on the floor around the knife.”

“Invisible ink?” Batsie asked as he climbed onto the chair. “Shouldn’t you be working with chalk or salt or something?”

“Normally, yes,” I admitted, bending down to draw a circle around the case. No one ran up to tell me to stop, and the musicians at the other end of the room weren’t paying us any mind, so I focused on setting up my ward. The case cast a shadow in the black light to one side, but I’d been drawing circles long enough that I kept the shape pretty well. “But there are going to be a lot of people coming and going, looking at the knife, and I don’t want them smudging my lines. I could do it in magic marker,” (Batsie snickered at the inevitable pun), “but Edwards would probably have my head for ruining his wood floors. So, invisible ink it is.”

“You planned this a lot, didn’t you?” He sounded impressed, as he should be.

“It’s what wizards do,” I replied. “We’re not that much stronger or smarter than other people, but give us some time to prepare and get our spells together and we can do some pretty amazing stuff.”

“So what are you doing now?” he asked.

“Wards. Protective spells.” I explained the basic theory of ward spells as I laid it down. The runes I was drawing on the floor and on the small podium that held the knife weren’t magic in and of themselves; rather, they were simply a focus for the magic, like the runes of my blasting rod or the long wood grains of my staff. They would channel my magic, direct it, control how it manifested itself. But they were just pretty calligraphy until I had infused them with some of my will.

An activated ward, at its most basic, is geometrically aligned energy arranged in such a way as to resist or reflect other forces, whether magical or physical. Most wards add other elements like painful shocks or misdirecting veils to dissuade people from trying to bypass the ward. The spell I was placing had been adapted to be particularly potent against faeries like the Fell Wolves. It used earth magic, forces of magnetism, to evoke the iron and steel that were the bane of all sidhe. It would repel any faeries that came near it, and cause them more and more pain the closer they got. Touching the case would be excruciating. For safety’s sake, I had designed it to affect only faeries; humans could walk right through without any trouble. That meant that if the thief who was summoning the Fells turned up, I would have to fight him for the knife directly instead of trusting my wards to protect it. But, I could worry about that when it happened.

Finally I finished the runes and stepped back to survey them in the purple glow of the black light. I paced around the display case, checking my work against the sheet of paper I’d sketched it out on with Bob’s help. If even one rune was off, the entire spell could collapse. At best, it would be too easy for the Fell to break through; at worst, it would blow the building apart when I tried to put some power into it. But it looked like all of my copying had been done properly.

I knelt down and tapped the outer ring of the ward spell, gathering my will together and directing it outward into the spiraling symbols. I felt the power leave me in a rush. The symbols didn’t light up; there was no shimmer in the air. Only a practitioner would have been able to sense that anything had changed. I sat and took a moment to catch my breath.

“That’s it?” Batsie asked, stepping down from the chair and handing the black light back to me. He was surprisingly calm for a straight who’d just had his first encounter with magic, though I suppose the particular spell wasn’t very visually impressive as these things go.

“What,” I said, “were you expecting a glowing force field? Yeah, that wouldn’t scare the party guests.” I stood up with a groan and pulled out the map I had gotten from Agent Smith, looking over where I had drawn the circle to protect the area where the party would be held.

I eyed Batsie, who was waving a hand through the air above my ward and appeared to be in no rush to get back to wherever he was supposed to be standing guard for the night. I guess he had nothing better to do, or else he was truly very interested. Either way, I could make use of it. “You up for playing the lovely assistant a little longer?” I asked. Batsie grinned and nodded. “Good. I have a lot more invisible ink to lay down.”

Batsie and I made a wide and looping figure that was certainly not a circle around the ballroom, the dining hall, the bathrooms, and the kitchen, since there was no way I was leaving the innocent caterers out of my circle of protection. It wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t perfectly circular. The more circular it was, the easier it was to pour magic into, but I had enough raw power and enough experience that I would be able to manage with our wonky and meandering shape.

Once we’d made the first “circle” we doubled back and made a second. I explained to Batsie that I could use the first as a general circle, to block off external magics. That would prevent the thief from opening a gate from the Nevernever within the ballroom, and also keep the Fell from being able to barge right in. A basic circle wouldn’t hold long at all, but it was an adequate first line of defense when Plan A was evacuation.

The second circle was for the ward, and we circled back around a third time so I could draw out the symbols of the ward along the edge of it. I would activate this ward only if it proved impossible to get the bystanders to safety. I had deliberately left the knife outside of this protective circle. Even though my main goal was to prevent the theft of the knife, I judged that keeping it and the civilians behind the same wards would put bystanders at much more of a risk than giving them their own ward, and I wasn’t willing to compromise on that. This ward was more robust, able to hold against faeries, humans, and physical objects, since I didn’t want to risk the Fell’s summoner walking through and using them as hostages. The added layer of protection also made it dangerous to the people inside the ward if they happened to brush against it, which was why it would only be activated if there was no way to get them outside.

I was running out of invisible ink by the end of it, and had to switch to permanent marker. I wasn’t going to risk chalk lines being disturbed and damaging the spell. Fortunately, that happened in one of the hallways down by the kitchen, so it probably wouldn’t draw attention from anyone but the harried caterers until after the party was over.

I had just finished the last symbol of my ward when Agents Smith and Jones materialized from seemingly nowhere. I thought at first that they might comment on my minor act of vandalism, but they didn’t seem particularly bothered. I guess they were more concerned with actually protecting people than keeping up a pristine appearance. It was a refreshing change of pace.

Agent Smith cleared his throat, and I rose from surveying my work. “Mr. Dresden,” Smith said, “there is a police lieutenant waiting at the door. She is asking for you.”

“That’s my backup,” I told Batsie. “Thanks, Agents.” I nodded to Smith and Jones, and made my way back towards the door. I got lost for a bit, and Batsie had to redirect me. He didn’t rub it in, but he did spend the rest of the walk to the front entrance smiling broadly beneath his mirrored shades.

Murphy was standing just inside the door, a garment bag that I assumed held my rented tux thrown over her shoulder, surveying the ostentation of Edwards’ home with obvious distaste. She had taken my advice on dressing up, but in the exact opposite way from what I’d meant. She wore her formal uniform, the one with the insignia representing her rank sewn onto the jacket and the bars and pins declaring her years of dedicated service and acts of valor. There was no way she was going to blend into the crowd like that. She wore a gun at her hip next to her badge and cuffs, but the slight distortions in her clothing betrayed a shoulder holster and ankle rig, as well as a knife on the other ankle and probably a Kevlar vest under the jacket. She was kitted out like Rambo, ready to go to war. I guess it just showed that I get off on danger, because I found the whole ensemble oddly sexy.

And I wasn’t the only one.

“Who is _that_?” Batsie asked me, his voice soft and filled with awe.

“Don’t even think about it,” I told him under my breath. “She’d break you in five minutes.”

“I’m not sure I’d mind,” he replied earnestly. I snorted. He was young and had no idea what he was getting into.

Murphy turned as Batsie and I approached, eyeing us both. She shoved my tux at me as soon as I got near. “I had to go to three places to find something in your size, Dresden. You’re paying me back for the gas I wasted.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I told her, throwing a mock salute. Her eyes narrowed and I dropped it, still grinning. I had the secret to appeasing her. I reached into one of the pockets of my duster and pulled out the thermos I’d poured the last of the coffee into that morning. I’d left it black with her in mind, since I could always add sugar from the packets I kept in another pocket. When you have a coat like this, there’s no need to mess with making a bottomless purse.

Murphy snatched the thermos from my hands, popped the top, and sipped it cautiously to test if it was bitter enough for her distorted palate (the harsh stationhouse brew could double as paint stripper, but I suppose it grows on you after a while). My coffee passed muster: Murphy’s eyes widened in appreciation, and she tilted the thermos back and chugged the whole thing in one go. I raised an eyebrow.

“Dick Johnson really got under your skin, huh?” I asked when she lowered the thermos to catch her breath.

“Rick Johnson,” Murphy corrected subtly, “is an overgrown schoolyard bully who never learned how to share.” She passed the empty thermos back to me. “If he doesn’t bring me into the next briefing he has on this case, I’ll pull a few favors from friends in the crime lab to get all the evidence he tried to hide from me, and then start chasing down leads on my own.”

“That doesn’t sound very much like sharing,” I told her. Murphy glared at me, and I busied myself with examining the tux she’d brought. It was a good quality material, and surprisingly enough it looked like it actually would fit me in all the measurements. When Murphy does something, she does it right.

“Who’s this?” Murphy asked, glancing over my shoulder at the young agent who was still tailing me.

“Batsie,” I told her. They both stared at me blankly.

“Patrick Holland, Lieutenant,” Batsie said, holding out a hand to her, and Murphy looked inordinately pleased that he had used her title.

“I call him Batsie,” I supplied as they shook hands.

“I’m not sure I want to know the answer,” Murphy said dryly, “but why?”

I hooked a thumb at him. “Batman cufflinks.” Batsie –Patrick Holland- lifted his hand to stare at them, as though he hadn’t even realized what he was wearing, much less thought that someone might notice them.

Murphy rolled her eyes. “You’re ridiculous, Harry.”

“I’m adorable,” I corrected her. She shook her head, a little smile playing at the corner of her lips.

Then the smile fell. “So, what are we dealing with, here, Dresden?”

I took out the map and explained the situation to her, tracing over the exit routes and the rough outlines of where I’d placed my wards. She frowned deeply when I told her that the knife was in the ballroom where all the civilians would be gathered, and when I finished she shook her head and said, “I need to go have a talk with Mr. Edwards.” She turned to Batsie/Patrick. “Can you take me to him?”

“He won’t want to see you, Lieutenant,” Patrick cautioned. “And he won’t move it either.”

“We’ll see how he feels after I explain to him that he could be charged with reckless endangerment if anyone gets hurt when our thief shows up,” Murphy replied. Patrick’s eyebrows arched, and I could see that he had a whole new level of respect for Murphy. I guessed he wasn’t used to people standing up to Edwards, and I wondered what he would have thought of my little display earlier.

“Harry, is there anything else before I go give our gracious host a piece of my mind?” Murphy sounded like she was looking forward to the confrontation. I thought about cautioning her against taking her anger against Johnson out on one of the richest men in the city, but I knew that doing that would only bring her ire down on me.

“I’ve got another spell to lay,” I said. “It’ll detect when the monster shows up, and tell me where it is inside the house. I can do it without any help, though,” I added for Patrick’s benefit, since the young man looked like he was about to offer his assistance again.

Murphy nodded. “Then I’ll meet you in the ballroom when we’re both done. With any luck, we’ll be relocating that knife.”

I didn’t bother telling her that trying to take down the ward I’d placed and reassemble it elsewhere would probably take more out of me than I could spare. Murphy wouldn’t want to hear that, so I wasn’t going to bring it up unless I had to, and with what everyone had told me of Edwards I doubted I would. “Good luck,” I told her instead, and Murphy nodded to me. She walked off with Batsie, the young man eagerly asking about her service in SI, more chatty than he had ever been when helping me. I shook my head.

Conspicuous uniform aside, I was glad to have Murphy in the building. She wasn’t wrong about how dangerous this thing was, and I wouldn’t have wanted to fight it alone. It was reassuring to have an ally on hand, though I knew I’d still be twitchy until Thomas had shown up and my last spell was set. Probably after that, too.

I consulted my map, looking at the places where I’d made dots to mark off where I would lay my spider’s web spell. The spell was a net of energy that would send vibrations back to me whenever it came into contact with foreign magic, like that of a gate to the Nevernever opening or a faerie holding together a physical form. Then I could go to the source of the disturbance and take care of it, like a spider taking care of a thrashing fly. Although in this case it would be much harder than simply wrapping my prey in silk. The Fell and its master were no lightweights, and knowing where they were would only give me a very slight advantage. I would have to use it carefully.

I took a tub of play dough from my duster pocket and broke it off into pieces numbering one more than the dots I’d drawn on the map. The first ball I pressed against the molding along the floor under the table in the atrium, after pinching off a tiny bit from the ball to press into the paper of the map on top of the dot representing it. Then I set off to place the rest of the dots.

I tried to keep the number of dots to a minimum, only at crossroads and in large rooms, but the house was huge, and placing even a small number of dots took a long time. I saw lots of agents around the house, and although they gave me weird looks and exchanged pointed glances when they saw me mashing play dough into the floors and walls, none of them ever tried to stop me. When it was done I had a map dotted with tiny smears of play dough, and a little ball of it slightly bigger than the others had been. I laid the map on the floor in whatever room I’d ended up in (third story study, I think) and started working on the magic.

It was a thraumaturgical spell, the kind that works by connecting parts to wholes. The dots of play dough I’d left around the house had once been part of the whole tub, and the tiny dots I’d put on the map had once been part of the larger dots. There weren’t any symbols to guide and shape the magic; this spell used words instead. I murmured them over the map, feeling the magic build up like water behind a dam, a throbbing sort of pressure behind my eyes that spilled away abruptly when I finished the incantation. My little dots of play dough burned hot for a second, darkening the paper of the map around them, then settled down. That was how the spell would alert me to where the Fell showed up: little marks would be singed into the map wherever magic that wasn’t mine was done. If the magic was moving, the singe marks would move with it, forming lines on the paper following the path of the spell caster or faerie. No magic could be worked in the Edwards mansion without my knowledge, and no magic would be allowed to continue without my approval.

I stood up, bringing my map and play dough ball with me. It was time to head back to the ballroom and see if Murphy had beaten the long odds and convinced Edwards to move the knife. I stepped into the hall and turned the map over in my hands, trying to work out how to get down there from my current location. The Agents stationed nearby hadn’t stopped me from working my spell, but they didn’t go out of their way to give me directions either. It took me a few tries to properly orient myself.

By the time I found the right path, my stomach was growling like a bear woken up from hibernation. It was well past lunch time, and I had just worked two fairly large spells. I wasn’t drained, since I had chosen my spells carefully to ensure that I would have enough left over for a fight, but I was ravenous; my Froot Loops had worn thin hours ago. If Murphy wasn’t going to have me relocate my ward as soon as I got there, I was moving for an immediate lunch break.

I found Murphy in the ballroom seated on the chair Batsie had used to hold the black light, her arms crossed and her expression dour. Batsie stood to her right at a distance and position that reminded me of how Cujo flanked Marcone, and I wondered if it had been drilled into both of them during security training. The knife and its case were still in the same spot. It didn’t look like anyone was planning on moving them any time soon.

I also noticed a plate of finger sandwiches and a can of coke resting on a nearby table, and I made a beeline for them before stopping to chat. “We grabbed some food on the way back from talking to Edwards,” Batsie explained as I debated whether to go for the coke or the food first. “Brought some back for you.”

“I could kiss you,” I said earnestly. Hunger won out, and I stuffed one of the finger sandwiches into my mouth whole while Murphy rolled her eyes.

“No luck with Edwards,” she told me while I ate.

“It was amazing, though,” Batsie said, admiration in his voice. “I’ve never seen anyone talk to Mr. Edwards like that. And the look on his face when you threatened to arrest him!”

“I’ll do it, too,” Murphy said petulantly, “if his arrogance gets anyone killed.”

“It’s our job to prevent that,” I reasoned between bites of food. “Don’t worry, Murph; Edwards may be playing fast and loose with other people’s lives, but my wards are solid. No way anybody gets hurt on my watch.”

“That’s encouraging,” she said dryly, “considering you collapsed a building the last time you ran into this thing.”

Batsie gaped at me. I gaped at Murphy. “How did you…?” Then I remembered who else had been there when it happened, and had planned on calling Murphy to check in with her. “Thomas.”

Murphy nodded. “He told me the both of you almost got yourselves killed last time, and your spells just rolled right off of it. That would have been nice to know in advance.”

I winced, because I knew that she was probably right. Even though that prior knowledge probably wouldn’t have changed Murphy’s decisions any–she’d still be here, and still be armed with the only weapons available to her- she had a right to know what she was getting into.

“I’m better prepared this time,” I told her, leaving the apology unstated. “I’ve researched these things, and I know what I need to do to hurt them; my spells won’t roll off anymore.” A slight exaggeration, but hopefully that wouldn’t matter in the long run. “Besides that, my wards will protect the walls behind them as well as the people. I can’t promise I won’t break the rest of the house if it comes to that, but I’m not about to drop a building on any civilians.” The last part came out in a rather indignant tone, and Batsie started to laugh but tried to disguise it as a cough. Murphy glared at him too.

“Property damage is no laughing matter,” she said to no one in particular.

“Sorry, Murph,” I mumbled, meaning it for everything from the building to the deception to the laughter.

She nodded in acceptance, and was about to say something else when Agent Smith popped up out of nowhere, exactly like the film character I’d named him after.

“The guests will begin arriving shortly,” he informed us. “The security staff has set up a checkpoint at the door and will prevent anyone from bringing in weapons.”

“Good work,” I said, even though I thought that was probably useless.

Smith shrugged almost imperceptibly. “Mr. Edwards has asked that we defer to your expertise,” he said, his tone betraying no emotion. Edwards extending any such professional curtesy was news to me, and I raised an eyebrow. Smith didn’t elaborate. “Is there anything in particular my men should watch out for, Mr. Dresden?” he asked smoothly. “Or any other measures we should take?”

“Keep your glow sticks handy, because the thief might cut the power,” Batsie volunteered ahead of me. Smith looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded.

I pulled out my map again, with its little singed play dough dots, and pointed to the outline of the larger ward I’d done. “Once all the guests are gathered, no one comes or goes from this area unless it’s time to evacuate; not even your people. Stepping over the line will break the protective circle. Is that understood?”

Smith examined the map closely, memorizing the shape of my ward, then nodded. “I will pass it along,” he assured me, and left.

“Is it really that late?” I asked Murphy when he had gone. She pulled back her sleeve to check her watch, and I glanced at it over her shoulder. Nearly five o’clock; no wonder I’d been starving. The spells had taken longer to place than I’d expected.

“Edwards is an old man,” Batsie said flippantly. “He starts his parties early so he doesn’t have to stay up late.”

“Early enough to be dangerous,” I replied. “The thief is known to operate between the hours of six and ten: right about the time people are going to be here.” Batsie glanced at Murphy apprehensively, and she frowned.

“So what exactly are we dealing with here, Harry?” Murphy asked.

“It’s called a Fell Wolf, a faerie creature.” I explained to her what I knew about the monster, and the different measures I’d set up to defend against it. I described my previous encounter with it, carefully eliding the part where Thomas and I kissed, and told her what I’d learned since then from Ramirez and Bob. I didn’t worry so much about Batsie being there to listen in; he’d see everything for himself soon enough.

“You think the wizard summoning it is going to show up?” Murphy asked me.

“Probably,” I admitted. “He’s got to be sitting on the other side of the portal waiting for his pet to come back through. If he realizes something’s gone screwy, he’ll probably come in to deal with it himself.”

Murphy nodded gravely. She’d had plenty of run-ins with warlocks, and while some of them were just your average Tuesday afternoon, others had nearly cost her her life. She knew how deadly a battle between wizards could be.

“I want you to leave the warlock to me, Murph,” I told her. “You and Thomas make sure the Fell doesn’t get me from behind, okay?”

“I’ll keep it off you,” she replied. “But if I get a shot at the wizard, I’m taking it.”

I didn’t really like the idea of Murphy drawing attention to herself like that, but I knew if wouldn’t make a difference if I told her not to. Besides, I’d seen for myself how effective non-magical weapons could be against wizards who had gotten too accustomed to relying on their powers. A well-timed bullet might be more effective than all the magic I could throw.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” I said, and Murphy nodded.

Batsie cleared his throat, and Murphy and I both looked to him. “If the guests are coming, I should be getting to my station,” the young man said almost sheepishly. “It was an honor watching you talk to Mr. Edwards, Lieutenant.”

Murphy didn’t smile exactly, but the corner of her mouth twisted upwards. “Get to work, Mr. Holland.” Batsie threw her a salute and then left the same way Smith had. Murphy and I watched him go.

“Almost show time,” Murphy said to me, her voice subdued. I nodded. “Isn’t Thomas supposed to be meeting us before the party?” she asked.

“He said he’d be here before six.” I replied, feeling a flutter of anxiety in my chest. That was the trouble of having Thomas make his move from behind the scenes; I could never confirm whether he was in place. But he’d definitely said he would meet me, not just be around to cover my back. I should have seen him by now. “When did you last talk to him?”

“A few hours ago.” Murphy pulled her cell from a pocket of her coat and dialed. I took a step back, to minimize the interference. She held the phone to her ear for a few moments, waiting, the lowered it and shook her head. “It went straight to voice mail.”

“Dammit,” I muttered. My overactive imagination suggested a dozen things that could have happened, each worse than the last, and I forcibly pushed them from my mind. There was no way the thief could have known we were waiting for him, much less made a preemptive attack on Thomas, and no reason for any of my other enemies to be acting now. But not having a viable suspect only made me more worried for my brother.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Murphy said evenly. “Thomas can handle himself. In the meantime, maybe you should change into that tux and check the wards one last time.”

“Right,” I agreed, grateful for the distraction. I retrieved the tux from where I’d left it in the atrium (the guards standing at the security checkpoint gave me disapproving looks) and slipped into one of the house’s many bathrooms to change. Once I was dressed I transferred a few tools from the pockets of the duster to those of the tux, but I had to leave a lot of stuff behind- the tuxedo jacket had been designed for elegance, not function. At least I could rest easy knowing that people weren’t likely to steal chalk or string from my pockets.

Murphy, who knew my tendency for less than perfect firearm storage, had thoughtfully picked up a spare shoulder holster, so at least I didn’t have to worry about where to put my gun. My blasting rod fit into the pocket of my pants and my sword cane, elegant enough with its silver handle to be appropriate for Edwards’ party, remained in my hand.

I left my clothes folded and tucked under the sink, where I hoped they wouldn’t be disturbed, and brought the handheld black light out with me. With Murphy’s (somewhat reluctant) help, I circled the ballroom and dining hall once more, checking the glowing symbols on the walls and floor against what was written on my paper. I made sure to double-check the parts Bob had made me redo when I’d copied it down, just to make sure I hadn’t made the same mistakes twice.

By the time I was done it was past six and there was a steady stream of well-dressed people moving through the checkpoint at the front entrance and heading towards the ballroom. I left the black light with the rest of my things and joined Murphy off to one side. A few of the guests cast anxious glances in our direction, though I noticed they were looking more at Murphy than me. For once I was dressed appropriately and she was standing out.

Murphy murmured to me the names of the people she recognized. Some of them were Chicago’s independently wealthy, while others worked at museums or universities in the art or history departments. A few could have had smuggling or forgery connections, but most of them were fairly average citizens who were likely involved in Marcone and Edwards’ business unwittingly if at all.

I didn’t like having the protective circle down like this, but there wasn’t anything I could do to make people arrive faster. I had to wait, barely resisting the urge to pace, while the guards waved metal detector wands over the guests and checked their names against a list. Edwards himself greeted them at the door to the ballroom, shaking hands with the men and bowing to the ladies.

It was six thirty before Agent Smith informed Murphy and me that all of the guests on the list had arrived. Thomas still hadn’t shown up, and when I badgered Murphy into calling him again his phone went to voice mail once more. There was a part of me that wanted desperately to go out and look for him, to run back to my apartment or even start up a tracking spell, but I pushed the urge aside. Thomas had been taking care of himself in hostile environments for years before I met him, and he’d been looking out for me ever since. Just because I hadn’t seen him didn’t mean he wasn’t around, watching.

Besides, I couldn’t just leave. I had a job to do here.

Murphy and I went to the doors of the ballroom. Edwards was standing just inside, talking to one of his guests, but he spared a dark look for me over his conversation partner’s shoulder. I returned it with my brightest smile. Batsie stood to one side of the doors, his mirrored sunglasses firmly in place and his posture at military rest, and it was only by the cufflinks that I could tell him apart from the agent standing at the other door. I went up to him and held out my map and the little ball of play dough.

“I need you to watch these,” I told him. “The protective circle cuts off outside magic; the spell won’t work if I take them inside.”

Batsie took the map and play dough, turning the ball over in his fingers skeptically. “These are for the spell to know when the thief gets here?”

I nodded. “If anyone besides me does magic inside the house, this spell will let us know.”

“How?” Batsie asked, perfectly practical. I could get used to working with professionals like this.

“The play dough ball will start to feel hot, and then little singe marks will appear on the map wherever the magic was done. If that happens, come inside and get me.”

Batsie carefully tucked the map into his jacket pocket, leaving the play dough ball free in his hand. “Won’t that break the circle?”

I waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, but so will evacuating, and that’s what I need you and your people to help the guests and the caterers do, just as soon as you tell me something’s coming.”

Batsie nodded. “I can do that.”

“Good,” I said. “One more thing. If you see a man, about six feet tall, longish black hair, body like a Greek god and face like a fashion model, send him to me, okay?

Murphy snorted at my description of Thomas. Batsie’s eyebrows went up. “Is that the thief?”

“He’s a friend,” I replied. “He’s helping us deal with the thief.”

Batsie looked skeptical, but all he said was, “I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Good man,” I said, and clapped him on the shoulder.

Then Murphy and I went inside.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting three chapters today, since the first one is rather short and the second is very short. There's finally some action in these chapters, and things will be moving a lot faster from here.

The first thing I noticed was the crowd around the case that held the knife. They were mostly the academic types Murphy had pointed out to me, the professors of history and museum curators, all standing around and murmuring appreciatively, apparently unaffected by the dark aura of the knife. I knew they must be standing right on top of the symbols I’d drawn, and I congratulated myself on the forethought to make the ward harmless to humans. I just hoped they wouldn’t scuff my markings and damage the foundations of the spell.

The doors of the ballroom closed behind me and Murphy, and I edged away from them a little uneasily. Sure, I was about to close the circle, but I didn’t much like the feeling of being locked in. Edwards was beginning to make a speech to the small crowd, thanking his guests for their help in acquiring the knife, and he cast suspicious glares at me and Murphy every few words. I wondered if he would still be glad to have the knife by the time everything was over.

“Hold this a minute,” I said, and handed Murphy my sword cane. She took it and turned it over in her hands to examine the runes on the wooden shaft, then tugged the handle and sheath apart, drawing the blade out by an inch. She replaced it quickly, before any of the guests could notice she was carrying a weapon, and gave me a questioning look that I ignored. I went to the edge of the wall where I’d drawn my “circles” and knelt, feeling with my left hand for the lines of power I’d laid down.

I found the ward first, the powerful lines ready and waiting for me to pour energy into them. A little outside of that I found the plain line, the circle. I touched the line and infused it with a spark of will, feeling the drop of power flow out from me and along the errant curves of the shape I had drawn.

A magical circle creates a closed system, to borrow a term from physics. Solid matter, including objects and mortal people, can cross through the barrier, and in so doing break it. Magic and magical beings can’t cross. Spells that extend beyond the boundary of a circle are broken off when the circle is activated, which was why I’d had to leave the paraphernalia for my tracking spell with Batsie. He’d break the circle when he came in to tell me, but like I’d told him, evacuating the civilians would also break the circle, and that was Plan A. The circle was to give me a few seconds to activate the full wards in the case of a sudden assault, when my spell wouldn’t have given enough warning to be of any help. For Batsie’s sake, and for the rest of the security staff outside the circle, I hoped it wouldn’t be needed.

“Is it done?” Murphy asked, her voice subdued. To our right, Edwards had finished his speech and was greeting one of his guests personally. He was still glaring at me over her shoulder, which I thought was pretty rude, but she didn’t seem to notice that she didn’t have his full attention.

I stood and brushed my hands on my tuxedo pants, judiciously ignoring Edwards. “It’s done.”

“And Thomas?” Murphy’s blonde brows were drawn together in a worried expression. I shrugged helplessly.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, anxiety over the fact making my stomach roll uneasily. “He was supposed to be here before six.”

Murphy sighed and looked out over the crowd of people milling about the room, standing and chatting or sitting at the small tables or waiting by the raised dais for the orchestra to start playing. “We can’t do anything about it now. We’ll just have to wait and hope he shows up before the thief does.”

I frowned. “I hate waiting.”

“Suck it up, Dresden.” Murphy gave my shoulder an affectionate punch. “Why don’t you go get us something to eat?”

“What is this, senior prom?” I asked, forcing a smile onto my face. “Because I don’t remember asking you.”

Murphy rolled her eyes. “As if I’d say yes.”

The smile fell from my face as I surveyed the crowd. “I’m going to have a look around,” I told Murphy.

She nodded. “I’ll stay here and wait for the bat signal.” Her dry delivery startled a laugh from me, and we shared a grim smile before I left.

I waded into the crowd, aided by the fact that I was at least half a head taller than everyone in attendance. I got a few strange looks, but mostly no one paid me any mind. (I suppose it was the tux. Maybe if I tried to dress a bit less eccentrically on a daily basis I wouldn’t attract so much attention. But where was the fun in that?) The natural motion of people pushed me towards the center of the room, and I stopped there and closed my eyes, letting everyone else flow around me. I didn’t want to Listen, capital L, in such close quarters (the dull roar of conversation would have been head-splittingly loud if I did), but I did want to see if I could pick out anything about the knife, or Edwards and Marcone, or anyone who seemed to know that the party was going to end early.

I identified and then summarily ignored the voices that seemed to be simply gossiping, then eavesdropped on a few conversations of substance. Within a few minutes I’d learned that the knife had spent the last several decades of its no doubt long and bloody history sitting in the storage room of a Spanish museum, and that it had been put up for auction rather unexpectedly just last week. Edwards had bid furiously, and within forty-eight hours of acquiring the knife had made a big donation to a research fund set up by the curator of the museum the knife had come from. It was underhanded, maybe, but it wasn’t illegal or immediately relevant to the upcoming theft, so the information wasn’t worth much to me.

At the edge of my awareness I caught the name “Marcone” and I wrenched my focus away from the conversation about the knife to zero in on the new voice. Before I could fully identify it, though, another voice captured my attention. I registered the familiar timbre before my mind even processed the words, and I spun around, eyes flying open to skim across the crowd until they caught on Thomas’s profile.

I felt something in my chest loosen, like a part of me had been holding its breath and now let it out in a sign of relief. I watched him for a moment, just to reassure myself of his presence, his wellness. I noted the way he held himself, strong and self-assured, the way he smiled and nodded as his conversation partner made a comment I didn’t deign to listen too. Then I reluctantly cast my awareness back over the rest of the crowd, listening for the voice that had said Marcone’s name. It had been a woman, but she wasn’t speaking now. After a few distracted seconds, I set the voice aside in my thoughts and went to Thomas.

He seemed to sense me approaching and turned when I got near, his eyes locking on me without having to search. He smiled, grey eyes dancing. “Harry!” he greeted me, and maybe it was overdramatic but I swear my heart jumped when he said my name.

Thomas held out a hand towards me, beckoning. Like me and every other male in attendance, he was wearing a tuxedo, but he wore it better than any of the rest of us. I managed to stop myself from giving him a once-over with my eyes, barely, though I did take note of the figure he cut in the tux. There’s a reason the height of menswear hasn’t changed much over the past century. It flatters all of the good points while concealing all of the flaws- though I don’t think Thomas had any of those to begin with.

I went to him, feeling gawky in comparison but not really caring as long as I was in his presence. He’d apparently been talking to an older couple, the woman a distinguished beauty even with lines on her face and grey streaks in her dark hair, the man aging not quite so gracefully. When I came to stand beside him Thomas’s arm slipped around my body. His hand settled over my hip, thumb stroking almost absentmindedly, and I tried not to tense up. I glanced at Thomas, waiting for some indication of how he wanted to play it. I wasn’t against playing the couple, if it was productive; I just wanted to have some warning in advance, so I could mentally prepare.

Thomas wasn’t even looking at me. He wasn’t giving me much to work with, but I had to assume he was doing it for a reason, whether to gain something from them or just to embarrass me. I had seen him behave this way, handsy and constantly making an excuse to touch, with the women he fed off of, but he was always hands-off with the people he actually knew. He had certainly always been hands-off with me, at least up until that shoulder rub last night.

“This is Harry Dresden,” Thomas told the couple. I forced a smile, trying to be polite even though I really didn’t want to get drawn into the conversation. Thomas didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. “Harry, this is Mrs. Grace Sandoval, and her husband Devon.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, glancing over to the door where Murphy was waiting. I couldn’t see her through the crowd. The woman, Mrs. Sandoval, held out her hand to me, palm down. It took me a second, but I realized what she expected of me and took her gloved hand to bow over it. She seemed pleased with that, or at least she was smiling when I straightened up. Nice to see that some people still appreciate a little chivalry.

“Mr. Dresden,” she said, her voice smooth and velvety, “I don’t believe we’ve met before. May I ask how you know Quintin?”

“We have some temporary business together,” I said simply. “If all goes well, it will be over soon.”

She nodded, apparently unconcerned with the lack of detail. “I see. And have you been enjoying his hospitality so far?”

I looked back at the ballroom, the well-dressed people talking in soft voices, the band setting up to play. One of the catering staff passed by, holding a tray of wine glasses, and I thought of the last time I’d had wine at a party thrown by one of my enemies. It had been poisoned.

“The last time I was at a party like this, I started a war,” I said dryly.

Thomas’s eyebrows arched in surprise, and the corner of his mouth twitched upwards. The couple exchanged a shocked, uncertain glance before the woman spoke again, this time directed at Thomas.

“I do hope your friend is joking, Mr. Raith.”

“He’s not,” Thomas said, eyeing me with a dark amusement. I smirked in response. The woman edged back from us minutely, casting her eyes away.

An awkward silence fell after that, the couple apparently uncertain of how to respond to my statement. Not that I blamed them; such massive breaches of diplomacy probably didn’t come up often in polite conversation. I put my hand over Thomas’s where it was resting over my hip, meaning to remove it and start pulling him towards the door and Murphy. Before I could, though, the musicians began to play, music swelling in a waltz. Half a dozen couples broke off from the crowd to take the dance floor. Thomas twined his fingers with mine and pulled me closer to him, so that I was forced to put my arm around him too to keep its position from becoming too awkward.

“Oh, a waltz!” Mrs. Sandoval sighed. “I used to love dancing when I was young. Unfortunately Devon can’t anymore because of his hip.” She nodded to her husband. He certainly looked pained, but I thought that probably had more to do with her gossiping about him than any hip trauma. “Ah, but don’t let us keep you,” she added, looking between Thomas and me. “Dancing is the pleasure of the younger couples.”

I tried to pull away from Thomas, because I didn’t see what could be gained by letting her think us a couple, but he held me firmly against his side. In terms of physical strength there was no contest between us, and if I didn’t trust Thomas so completely the demonstration of that strength would have scared me more than it did. As it was, I was simply mildly annoyed, and a little turned on.

Thomas took Mrs. Sandoval’s hand and bowed over it, his lips touching her silk opera glove. “It has been a pleasure speaking with you,” he said. “With your permission, we’ll take our leave.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Sandoval said. Her husband merely grunted, and I got the idea he’d be happier once Thomas was well away from his wife.

Thomas pulled me towards the dance floor, and I made a show of dragging my feet. “Is this really necessary?” I asked.

The prospect of dancing with Thomas was both wonderful and horrifying, mostly because I didn’t think I’d be able to reign in my body’s response. Sure, Thomas liked to embarrass me by acting like we were lovers, but I didn’t for a minute think that his behavior meant anything. I definitely didn’t think he’d laugh it off if he realized I’d popped a boner.

“Do you have anything better to do while we wait?” Thomas asked me, as if that were the only problem.

“But why _me_?” I complained, even as I let him lead me onto the dancefloor. My body flushed with anxiety and excitement as we turned to face each other and Thomas’s hand slipped into mine. I just hoped it wasn’t showing on my face too.

“Because picking up one of the guests would only cause trouble,” Thomas said, his tone matter-of-fact. “You _know_ how women get around me.” I snorted, because I knew exactly how women got around him. It was only my awareness of his vampire charms that gave me the clarity to keep from acting the same way.

“One dance, Thomas,” I told him sternly. “One dance.” He smiled, affecting innocence, and I rolled my eyes. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep to that promise; not when I wanted so badly to feel his body pressed against mine. I knew that he knew it too, even if he didn’t know why. There was nothing I could refuse him if he asked.

I placed my right hand on his back, just below his shoulder blade. Thomas raised an eyebrow at me. “Why am I the lady?” he asked, but he laid his hand over my shoulder without resistance.

“Because you’re shorter, and I only know how to dance the man’s part,” I replied.

Thomas laughed. “I suppose there is too much of you to lead around easily. Just don’t step on my toes.”

I put the toe of my shoe lightly and deliberately over the tip of his, and he gave me a look of equal parts amusement and exasperation. I grinned. Thomas shook his head, his dark curls swaying with the motion. I moved my foot back and took a moment to find the rhythm of the music before I started to move. “Where have you been?” I asked Thomas under my breath. It would be easier to keep my body in check if I kept my mind on other things. “You were supposed to be here by six.”

“I’ve been in this room since five-thirty,” he pointed out, a note of gentle chiding in his voice. “You’re the one that joined the party late.”

“Excuse me for not realizing you were coming with the guests,” I muttered. “How did you even get an invitation?”

“I know people,” he said enigmatically, his mouth curved into a smile around the words.

“You mean Lara? I’m not threatening her again, am I?” Thomas had made a threat on my behalf and without my knowledge to get information out of his sister in the past. “Because it’d sure be ballsy of me to do that twice in a few months.”

“Don’t worry; I did this all through my own connections. I didn’t bring your name into it at all.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling the strangest sense of disappointment.

Thomas noticed, and he raised his eyebrows. “Really? Are you that self-centered that you’re upset there can be conversations that don’t involve you?”

“Well, when you put it that way,” I said, and he laughed.

The conversation lulled, and I realized that the orchestra was playing something different from when we’d started dancing. I’d already broken my one song stipulation, but I found I wasn’t in any rush to get off the dance floor. I was enjoying myself, actually, and more than I ever would have expected to while at a millionaire’s party waiting for a supernatural threat to rear its head.

Dancing with Thomas was an experience, even leaving aside my attraction to him. For one thing, the height difference between us was a lot less than with any other partner I’d had, and I found that it was much more comfortable to dance when I didn’t have to hunch over to accommodate someone a foot and a half shorter. But attributing the ease of movement to the height difference alone would have been shorting Thomas on credit. He was a smooth dancer, and it didn’t seem to bother him at all to take the lady’s part. He responded to the slightest shift in the pressure of my hand on his back, following my lead flawlessly.

“You dance surprisingly well,” Thomas said suddenly, giving voice to exactly what I’d been thinking.

“Why surprisingly?” I asked him when I’d gathered my wits back up.

Thomas gave me a flat look. “Harry, I’ve seen you trip over the dog and cat half a dozen times in the past week.” I cringed. It was the truth. “It’s surprising to see you move with any grace at all.” He shrugged, a roll of his shoulder beneath my palm. “Not that I’m complaining. Where did you learn?”

“That’s a secret.” I said, just to be stubborn. If Thomas knew I’d learned ballroom dancing from a part-time job at an old folks’ home, I’d never hear the end of it.

“Oh really?” His eyes glinted with mischief and his lips curled into a smile that made a bolt of lust shoot down my spine. “Now I simply _must_ know.”

“I’m not telling.” I insisted.

Thomas took it as a challenge. He leaned closer, and I could feel his breath against my neck. “Tell me,” he demanded.

“No.”

“Come on,” Thomas begged, pressing his body against mine. My dance steps faltered, but I managed to pick them back up. People were staring at us; at him. They had been ever since we stepped onto the dance floor, but now it was with hunger in their eyes instead of just appreciation. Was he really trying to use his powers on me?

Maybe it would have been wiser to just give him what he wanted. But it’s a well-known fact that I have more stubbornness than sense, and that wasn’t going to change now. “No.”

Thomas rolled his eyes at me, and a note of annoyance entered his voice. “Please?”

Seeing him looking frustrated instead of demanding lessened the effect he was having on me, enough that I could think more clearly. I was left wondering how much of what I’d felt had been him trying to seduce information out of me, and how much had been him teasing and me, as usual, responding the wrong way.

“No,” I said again, and he frowned. Before he could say anything else, though, I added, “Dammit, Thomas, people are staring!”

Thomas sighed, a warm puff of air against my neck that had me tensing up to hold in shivers. Then he took a step back, bringing the distance between us back to a socially appropriate level, and I felt like I could breathe a little more easily. “People always stare at me,” he said, not bothering to look around for himself. “Trust me, there’s not a single person in this room right now who doesn’t wish they could be in your place.”

I shifted uncomfortably. His tone and expression projected confidence and pure, unabashed sexuality, but there was a sadness in his eyes that spoke volumes. As much as people would trip over themselves to join him in bed, I knew that it was impossible for Thomas to form an emotional connection with them. The one person he’d been romantically involved with had nearly died because of it, and though she’d survived the two of them could no longer be together. Thomas was lonely. I wanted to tell him that I could help, that I could ease his pain. But there were so many reasons why I couldn’t.

I didn’t know what to say to him. I might have figured something out, in a minute or two, except that before I got the chance the lights flickered and went out.

I tensed, felt my heart start to speed up and forced myself to breathe evenly. I could feel Thomas’s hand perfectly and unnaturally still in mine while the orchestra trailed off in an inharmonious warble and murmurs of confusion and worry broke out all around us. “The door,” I told Thomas, trusting that he would hear me over the other voices. “Murphy’s there.”

I sensed more than saw him nod, then he broke the dance position and began pulling me by the hand through the press of bodies. I figured he could probably see better than I could what was around us, so I let him take the lead and followed behind, mumbling apologies as I stumbled over my own feet and everyone else’s.

Thomas shouldered his way through the crowd without a word, his polite manner set aside, and brought me through to the entrance of the ballroom in a matter of seconds. As we drew near the door I saw that he had drawn a knife from somewhere, and was holding it low so as not to attract attention. A group of Edwards’ black-suited security staff stood near the door, their dark sunglasses set aside. They paid no attention to us when we walked past.

Murphy and Batsie stood before the partially open doorway, a little apart from the guards. The soft light of a glow stick illuminated their grim expressions as they looked down at my map. They looked up at us as we drew near, and Murphy noticed Thomas’s presence but didn’t waste time asking when he’d arrived. She held a flashlight, evidently useless, in one hand, my sword cane in the other; Batsie held the glow stick above my map.

He held the map out to me, and I took it in both hands. “There,” Batsie whispered, pointing to a room on the map. “In the gallery on the third floor.” Before his fingertip a tiny black spot was squirming around the page, leaving a little grey trail behind. I gave the rest of the map a cursory glance to ensure there were no other black marks, then nodded to him.

“Good work. Now you and your people get these folks out of here. Don’t forget to clear the kitchens, too, and make sure the exit route doesn’t take them anywhere near the stairs to the gallery.”

Batsie passed the glow stick to Murphy, then stepped back to confer with the other guards, who were now pulling out glow sticks of their own. Edwards stood nearby, holding a map, and appeared to be directing them to spread out and guide people towards the exits. As the three of us left the ballroom I heard Edwards addressing the crowd in a loud voice, explaining that regretfully the party would have to end early due to a power outage and everyone should calmly follow the security staff’s directions to get back outside. I had to give him credit; as intractable as he’d been about having the party, at least he had the sense and skill to break it up calmly when he realized his guests were really in danger.

Murphy handed me my sword cane and led the way out into the cavernous, empty atrium, the glow stick held aloft before her while Thomas and I followed behind. The shadows of the room closed in on us, the glow stick barely holding them off. I tucked the sword cane under my arm, then tugged off my bowtie and undid the top button of my shirt so I could pull out the chain I wore beneath it. I took my pentacle pendant in my hand and willed a tiny spark of magic into it. Immediately the silver metal took on a soft blue glow, and the gloom around us retreated a bit more.

Thomas had raised his blade as we stepped out of the ballroom, and now in the light of my pentacle and Murphy’s glow stick I saw that it was near six inches long and had a slight curve. I wondered but didn’t ask how he’d managed to get it through the security checkpoint. Thomas exchanged a look with Murphy, and without a word she passed him the gun she wore at her hip before drawing a small automatic pistol from her shoulder rig. I didn’t bother drawing my revolver; aside from the fact that I didn’t have enough hands to juggle it along with the map, sword cane, and pentacle, I had brought along another weapon that I hoped would be more effective against the faerie creature than my six-round firearm.

The Fell’s shields made my preferred mode of combat magic mostly useless, and as much as it pained me to admit it Murphy and Thomas undoubtedly posed more of a threat than I did when it came to fighting with bullets or blades. That was why I’d been working on something since my last run-in with the sidhe. I hadn’t tested it out yet, so I had no idea how well it would work, but if all went well I’d be able to do more in this fight than sit around with my thumb up my ass.

“Third floor,” I whispered, checking the map once more before tucking it into my jacket pocket. I gestured to the staircase with the tip of my sword cane. “Two flights up and to the left.”

Murphy took point, leading the way up the stairs to the third floor with her gun held up before her, the same way SWAT clears a building. We passed a few grim-faced Agents on our way up, all of them proceeding to the first floor to help out with the evacuation. When we reached the third floor I dropped my pentacle and focused instead on my shield bracelet, so that I could bring it up around us at a moment’s notice. In the enclosed hallway, the soft light of Murphy’s glow stick provided enough illumination for us to find our way.

With the guards downstairs the floor was utterly devoid of life, and in the green light of the glow stick the house’s aging opulence looked bleak and derelict. It reminded me of those paranormal reality shows where people go around trying to find ghosts to poke for fun. Normally I found the inaccuracy and amateurishness of those shows laughable, but the comparison wasn’t so funny when I was the one seeking out monsters. No sensible person ever felt comforted by knowing the truth about what’s lurking in the dark.

I could still hear the sounds of people moving around downstairs, high murmurs of confusion and deeper voices trying to keep order. Below that, growing louder as we approached the gallery, was the sound of something big breathing heavily and stomping about.

We stopped our approach a few yards from the door of the gallery. “How do you want to play this?” Murphy asked, looking at me over her shoulder while keeping her gun trained on the door. I spared a moment to wonder when it was that Lieutenant Karrin Murphy started deferring to me on anything at all, at least without me having to point out my years of experience and training first.

“I always prefer the direct approach,” I told her, and waited for her nod before I blew open the door of the gallery with a word.

A thundering snarl of rage sounded from within, and then the hulking form of the Fell appeared in the smoking doorway. It was bigger than the one Thomas and I had fought before, and it tore the molding from the doorframe as it shoved its way through. Its grey hide was dotted with white scars and its eyes glowed luminous yellow in the dark.

Murphy dropped to one knee and opened fire with her automatic.

Whatever shield had protected the Fell from my magic before, it hadn’t been redesigned to guard against physical objects. The bullets ripped through its body, sending out a spray of red blood, and it reeled backward with a howl of pain. The Fell threw itself back behind the wall separating the gallery from the hallway. A few of Murphy’s bullets bit into the drywall, but she stopped firing when she saw they wouldn’t reach it. She checked the clip, exchanged it for a fresh one in a fraction of a second, then looked up at me.

“We go in after it,” I declared. I stepped in front of Murphy as she rose, holding my left arm up and sending power into my shield bracelet. A half-dome of translucent blue formed in the air before me, lightning-like sparks of energy skittering across its surface. It had been doing that ever since the bracelet was damaged by the fire, but the shield had never given out on me, and I didn’t think it was going to start now.

I led the way up to the gaping doorway of the gallery, Murphy at my right and Thomas at my left, both of them with weapons drawn. I took the first tentative steps into the room, casting my eyes about in search of the monster we’d cornered inside. I’d heard the Fell moving about before we got near the gallery, but now the only sounds I could make out were breathing from myself and my companions, and the near-inaudible buzzing of my shield. The shield’s glowing surface obscured the darkness around us more than illuminated it, but I wasn’t willing to risk lowering it and having something jump out of the shadows to eat my face. I couldn’t see anything beyond the barrier that might have been the shape of the Fell- or rather, I saw too many massive shadows, and I spared a moment to hope that they were only shadows and I hadn’t just led us to our doom.

“Where,” Murphy’s voice murmured at my side, then cut off in a yelp as something huge and slavering rushed out of the darkness just behind the edge of my shield. It bowled into us, and I heard a frantic burst of gunfire and Murphy’s scream of surprise, saw glowing yellow eyes and white teeth illuminated by bright muzzle flashes, before the thing crashed into my shoulder and sent me sprawling.

The Fell and I tumbled and rolled across the ground, my shield flickering and dying as my concentration broke. I managed to keep my grip on my sword cane, though, and threw it up between me and the Fell when the creature tried to pin me down. Its massive clawed hands ripped down the outside of my arms, tearing into my flesh, and I cried out. The Fell braced itself on all fours and lunged down at me with its huge jaws. It took both of my hands and all of my strength to shove the sword cane up against its neck, forcing its blocky head back from mine.

A gunshot rang out behind me and I glanced back to see Murphy, her form towering from where I lay flat of the ground, standing not five feet from us and firing calmly right between the Fell’s yellow eyes. Another bullet made it reel backwards, forcing it off of me. Thomas appeared at my side, firing the gun he’d borrowed from Murphy with his left hand while trying to haul me back with his right. I took advantage of the Fell’s distraction to drop a hand from my sword cane and reach into my pocket for my own weapon.

I drew out a fistful of steel buckshot, dozens of marble-sized metal spheres, and threw them into the air between me and the Fell. I raised my sword cane and drew upon the forces of earth magic laid into it. “ _Repulus_!”

A sudden and powerful magnetic pulse seized the hanging buckshot and hurled it away from me with all the force of a fired bullet. The pellets hit the Fell with enough power to send it sprawling back across the room, some of them ripping clean through its body.

Unfortunately the pulse’s effect wasn’t limited to the buckshot, and my allies’ weapons were torn from their hands as my magic seized them. It acted on Murphy’s sidearm and the gun and knife at her ankles too, sweeping her legs out from under her and pitching her to the floor. Thomas kept his feet, and he was dragging me up and back from the Fell before the creature hit the ground. I looked behind us to Murphy, but she was picking herself up and looking no worse for wear. She retrieved her gun from where it had fallen, then glared at me. “A little warning next time, Dresden!”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, sagging against Thomas with relief. Or maybe it was blood loss. The fabric of my jacket and shirt had been reduced to bloody ribbons around my arms, and I couldn’t see the extent of the damage done to my body.

A gurgling snarl drew my attention back to the Fell as it dragged itself to its paws. Blood was dripping from its muzzle and from the dozens of wounds we’d inflicted, but it was still moving. I was struck by a sudden sense of kinship with the damned thing- it just wouldn’t lie down and die quietly.

“I hope that wasn’t the only trick you had up your sleeve,” Thomas said tersely from my side. His gun and knife had both been ripped away by my magnetic pulse, and supporting me like he was he hadn’t been able to retrieve them.

“It’s not,” I assured him with a grim smile, and raised my sword cane again. “Brace yourself, Murph! _Adtracto_!” The same magnetic pulse ripped through the air, this time in reverse. The buckshot pellets that had torn through the Fell’s body were dragged forward to strike at its back, and the ones that had lodged in its flesh ripped their way back out. I threw up my shield. Steel balls stained red with the Fell’s blood struck against it, sending out a shower of blue sparks.

Thomas’s gun and knife skittered across the floor to stop at my feet. Murphy had been ready this time, and though the pulse drew her towards me it didn’t knock her over. She traded places with Thomas, bracing my shoulder so he could kneel down to pick up his weapons. I saw her eyes widen with horror when she noticed the blood dripping down my arms. I tried to put on a brave face when she looked up at me, but from her expression I don’t think I managed very well.

The Fell had pitched forward onto its paws and knees, its chest heaving and a puddle of blood quickly forming beneath it. “Ready for round three?” I crowed. “Come on, ugly, I could do this all day!”

The Fell lifted its head at my taunt, and I raised my sword cane. “ _Repulsus_!”

The buckshot that had struck my shield flew out again, but before it found its mark the scene in front of me shifted, distorted in a way that made my stomach turn before solidifying into a stone wall. I cast my eyes about, found the edges of the distortion, and recognized it as a gate into the Nevernever. Someone had opened it in just the right spot to repel my attack. I looked down and saw the Fell’s paws moving as it stepped through on the other side. Before I could even think of how to respond, much less bring a spell to mind, the portal winked shut again, and the Fell was gone.

I stood staring at the spot it had once occupied, numb with shock. The far wall was riddled with buckshot holes, and there was a pool of faerie blood congealing on the floor of Edwards’ gallery. I wondered who would have to clean it up. Then Murphy did something to one of my legs that made it fold painlessly beneath me, bringing me to the ground. She pulled the knife from her ankle sheath and started cutting back the fabric of my jacket and shirt from my wounds.

“Is that it?” Thomas asked warily. He stood nearby, knife and gun still at the ready, like he couldn’t believe it had ended that quickly.

“Looks like it,” I said, watching Murphy as she deftly fashioned a tourniquet from the shredded fabric of my rented tux. The wounds were shallow, and I judged that there wouldn’t be much lasting damage provided I got the blood loss stopped soon.

“Wasn’t there supposed to be an epic wizard battle?” Murphy asked while she worked. “The knife wasn’t even in this room. Would the thief really give up that easily?”

A sneaking suspicion struck me, and I pulled my hand from Murphy’s grasp to reach into my jacket pocket. I pulled out the map and fumbled it open, staining it with bloody fingerprints in the process. The three of us leaned over it, watching intently, just as a black dot burned itself into the page within the ballroom.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry's spells for this chapter:
> 
> Repulsus- "repulsus" is the perfect passive participle of the Latin word "repello", which means "to push back". The word is a combination of "pello"=push and "re"=back or away. Obviously, this is where we get the English words "repulse" and "repel" 
> 
> Adtracto- "ad"=towards, and traho/trahere/traxi/tractus="to draw or drag", although even in Latin "ad"+"tractus" turns into "attractus", not "adtractus". Again, this is obviously how we get the English word "attract"


	8. Chapter 8

I dragged myself to my feet and stumbled towards the door, Thomas catching me by one arm when I started to pitch forward. Murphy joined him on my other side, and between the two of them they managed to get me down the stairs in one piece. It took longer than I would have liked, but a glance at the map confirmed that the gate in the ballroom was still open. I made a mental note to thank Bob for his work on the ward that had confounded the thief just long enough.

As we reached the bottom of the stairs Murphy slipped from under my arm and drew her gun, moving swiftly down the steps with the gun leading before her. Thomas eased me down another step and something buzzed across the edge of my senses. It took me a second to realize what it was, but the moment I did I pushed away from Thomas and cried, “Wait!”

Murphy drew up short, just above the foot of the stairs, and looked back at me in confusion. Supporting myself with the sword cane (the first time I’d ever used it for that proper function), I tottered the few steps down to her under my own power and reached out with my left hand. The air glowed red as I touched it and I felt magic there, set into a structured order by a spell. A spell I recognized: my ward, activated by a magic that wasn’t my own.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered under my breath. “Son of a bitch stole my ward!”

My first thought was outrage, but my next was of the civilians the ward was meant to protect. Were they trapped inside with the thief? But I had left the knife outside the ward, so the thief shouldn’t be hiding within. Then it hit me that the thief didn’t need to be inside the ward to use it against us: I had drawn it right up to the edge of the staircase, and that arm of the shape now blocked our path. If we moved forward, or tried to go over the bannister into the atrium, the ward would do as it was designed and keep us out.

I ground my teeth, anger flaring within me at the thief, and at myself. How had I not seen this coming? I should have known better than to leave the spell half-done! I wanted to scream, to flail my fists and strike out at the barrier in front of me, but I knew I’d only injure myself if I did.

“Can you undo it?” Murphy asked me, eyeing the empty air askance.

If the spell had been activated by my power, it would have been a simple matter to draw it back out again. It would be much harder to force out someone else’s power. I might have been able to work through the pattern of the spell and disrupt it, but not quickly, and not if the thief had added any protective measures of his own.

I shook my head. “It wouldn’t be much of a ward if it could be taken down that easy from the outside.”

“Son of a bitch,” Murphy echoed me, and a wry smile tugged at my lips.

Across the atrium, at the door of the ballroom, there was a flash of purpleish light. I went to the railing of the stairs and looked out, a sinking feeling in my stomach. The ward around the knife had failed. A moment later a figure appeared at the door, moving through the open space I had left in the larger ward. I couldn’t have described the person that was there, beyond knowing they existed; the details were obscured even as I looked at them, and I judged it to be the effect of a veil. The only thing I could discern clearly was obsidian-bladed knife in the figure’s hand.

The figure turned to us, and though I couldn’t see its eyes I could feel them on me, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Then it turned away and waved a hand, and another gate to the Nevernever warped into being before it. It was well-lit on the other side, wherever it was, and light spilled out from the portal into the darkened mansion. I could make out the shape of the Fell within, its grey fur stained red with blood.

My hands tightened on the railing. The thief was getting away, taking with him the last artifact his employer needed to work a deadly spell, and there was nothing I could do but watch. I didn’t have any way to track the thief down later, or information on whomever had hired him. This had been my one chance to stop it, and I had failed. People were going to die because of me.

“If only I hadn’t made the damn ward!”

“Harry,” Thomas barked, his urgent tone shocking me from my guilt. I looked to him. “A ward like this is basically a big circle, right? If you break the lines, you break the spell?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “But this circle would kill you before you got near enough to break it.”

“I don’t need to get near it.” Thomas raised the gun he’d borrowed from Murphy and opened fire, not at the ward itself in the air before us, but at the bottom step where the spell rose up from my runes. 

The bullets tore through the carpet on the steps and bit into the wood floor below, splintering it and sending shards flying. For a moment the destruction was stopped cold at the edge of the ward, then tiny cracks appeared in the wood beyond. The symbols became visible under the assault, glowing red as the material they had been written on cracked from outside force. Murphy stepped up next to Thomas, firing into the ward script alongside him. Hairline fractures became greater fissures as they pumped bullets into the ground, and spider web cracks began to appear in the red surface of the ward.

I turned back to the figure, bubbling anticipation and strained anxiety shoving out the despair in my chest. My fingers flexed over the stair rail as I waited for the ward to crack. I drew up Hellfire, the sulfur-scented force of destruction that Lasciel’s shadow gave me access to, and readied a spell in the forefront of my mind for when the barrier fell.

The veiled figure had looked back at the sudden noise, but when it saw its only protection beginning to break it turned back to its gate and ran. I saw a spell flicker around it, some kind of shield, but I didn’t care. I would throw so much force into my Hellfire that it would blow right through that puny shield.

A flash of movement from the other side of the atrium caught my eye. A lone guard, sunglasses discarded in the shadows of the mansion, raised a gun to bear on the mirage-like figure with the knife. The shot came from behind the shield. It grazed the figure, sending a spray of red blood over the floor. The figure’s head jerked in the direction the bullet had come from, then turned to look at the blood. It swept its hand in an arc, sending flames dancing over the blood spatter and rendering it useless for whatever spells I might have tried.

Then it turned and threw a ball of fire at the guard.

The ward cracked and shattered before me, releasing a rush of foreign power into the air as the thief turned and bolted for the gate. I grabbed hold of some of the swirling energy, taking what had been used against me to power my own spell. The fireball was bearing down on the guard, and I recognized Batsie’s handsome face twisted into an expression of pure terror. There wasn’t time for more than one spell, nor time to second guess myself. I threw everything I could gather into my spell and cried, “ _Retextas_!”

The energy I had drawn together rushed out, chasing down the fireball and latching onto it, consuming it and burning it into ashes just moments before it would have scorched the young man to death. As it burned away I saw Batsie’s eyes lock on to me, his face pale and his expression one of awe and horror.

Gunfire roared at my side. I turned to see Murphy and Thomas emptying their clips into the space around the thief. His shield held, though, and their bullets bounced harmlessly off amid a shower of red sparks. I know from experience how hard it is to hold a shield against that kind of force while still sparing the concentration to walk. The rain of bullets should have been enough to pin the thief down, at least long enough for me to prepare another spell.

It wasn’t. His shield shrank as his focus wavered, but the stubborn bastard never stopped moving. I’d barely had time to start drawing together a second spell when the thief ducked through the portal to safety and the gate winked shut behind him.

The gunfire ceased abruptly, and silence reigned. For the second time that night I stared at the space where the thief’s portal had been, scarcely able to believe what had happened. Then the reality of it hit home like a punch to the gut, and my body sagged against the stair rail.

There were no seconds left on the clock for a Hail Mary; no last chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It was over, and I had lost. I had been outsmarted, and lives would be forfeit to the warlock’s blood spell for my folly.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry's spells for this chapter:
> 
> Retextas- a slight bastardization of "retextus", the perfect passive participle of "retexo", meaning "to unweave, undo, reverse, or cancel"


	9. Chapter 9

I sat down right there on the steps, the sudden adrenaline crash making my knees go weak. My head was spinning. I’ve seen animals used as sacrifices in spells before, their hearts torn still beating from their chests with all manner of cruel instruments. The thought of someone doing that to a human made my stomach turn. The blood loss didn’t help.

“Look after him,” I heard Murphy say to Thomas in a tone that brooked no argument. Then she turned away from us and started down the ruined steps.

“Where is she going?” I asked Thomas as he sat down beside me.

He stared at me for a moment without speaking. I wondered if it was a strange question. “Probably to check on that man and the rest of the bystanders,” Thomas said at last. He took my arm, the one Murphy hadn’t had the chance to start on, and began cutting away the shredded fabric as she had.

“Oh,” I mumbled. “Right.”

“The police are probably on their way,” Thomas said as he examined the gashes on my arm. “And even if they aren’t, I’m sure Karrin will have to make some kind of official report about this. We should be gone before anyone in a uniform shows up.”

“Right,” I said again, staring down at my arms. The blood had already started to dry, turning to sticky red scabs over the wounds and crusty flakes on the uninjured skin it had spilled over.

“You need a blood transfusion,” Thomas added matter-of-factly.

I just grunted. I didn’t feel up to arguing with him, and that more than anything told me he was probably right. I laid my head against his shoulder without thinking; it never occurred to me to worry what he might make of that. Even my guilt and hopelessness were distant things. I felt lightheaded and too bone-weary to have any other emotion. Thomas put his arm around me. I could smell the gunpowder on his clothes, mixing with the metallic scent of my own blood. In spite of everything I might have just fallen asleep leaning against him in the wreckage of the stairs, if I’d been given half a chance.

I wasn’t given half a chance.

A few minutes after I’d settled against Thomas, the sound of footsteps on the splintered wood of the foyer made me lift my head. Batsie -Patrick Holland- stood before me, his head hanging, eyes averted, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He lifted his chin to face me, his expression pained. I looked away hastily before I could get drawn into a soulgaze.

“Lieutenant Murphy told me what was at stake,” he began, his voice halting. “I wanted to help, but instead I just made things worse. I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”

“No it’s not,” I heard myself saying before I’d made the conscious decision to say it. My voice sounded hollow. “It’s not your fault. It’s my fault. I should have been better prepared. I should never have allowed my own ward to be used against me like that.”

“It’s the thief’s fault,” Murphy’s voice said, clear and calm, and all of us turned to look at her. She had emerged through the ballroom doors with some of Edwards’ security staff trailing behind her. The men stared openly at the wreckage we’d made of the atrium. Murphy’s expression was hard, grim, but her eyes glinted with a fierce determination. “And we’re going to get a second crack at him,” she declared, putting fisted hands on her hips, “or did you think this wasn’t connected to the art gallery theft?”

“There’s no evidence on that case,” I said wearily.

“There is,” she insisted, and for the first time I noticed that she held a cell phone in one of her hands. “I just got a call from the friend in the crime lab I had watching Johnson’s case files. They recovered a fingerprint from inside the case, and they’re running it now.”

My despair and numbness started to lift. I shook my head, amazed that after all the thought I’d put into magical means of catching the thief, it was plain old forensic science that might win the day. The motion brought the blood spilled by Batsie’s bullet into my field of vision, and the wheels started turning in my head. The thief had dried the blood with the fire spell, making it useless to me, but maybe not to Murphy.

“When your forensics team comes through here, make sure they get a sample of the blood on the floor,” I told her, waving a hand at it. “They may be able to get some DNA.”

Murphy nodded. “They’re on their way now. I’ll make sure it gets done.” She glanced towards the front door, as if half expecting a battalion of crime scene techs to burst through at any moment. “Normally all the witnesses would have to wait to be cleared before leaving, but since we sent them outside when all of this started most of them have already left.” She looked back to me and Thomas. “You should leave too. I don’t want to have to explain your presence here.”

“Sounds good to me.” Thomas stood, hauling me up with him. I swayed on my feet and might have fallen if he hadn’t caught me. “I’m definitely taking you to a hospital,” he muttered.

“Wait,” I slurred, my sluggish brain latching onto something important. “Murph, was anyone hurt?”

She shook her head. “Everyone got out safely.” Her mouth quirked in a wry smile. “No one so much as stubbed a toe. I guess I won’t be able to charge Edwards with reckless endangerment after all.”

I blinked at her for a moment, then laughed. A full, body-shaking laugh. It felt good, after everything that had just happened, though I had to stop pretty quickly when one of my ribs started sending shooting pains up my spine. Thomas helped me down the rest of the stairs and to the door, Batsie hovering anxiously until I ordered him to fetch my duster from under the bathroom sink. Thomas had somehow arranged for a limousine to be waiting out front by the time we got outside, and he loaded me and my gear into it and instructed the driver to get us to the nearest emergency room as fast as possible.

On more than one occasion in the past I’d kept up a campaign well beyond what I would have thought was my limit for pain, hunger, and exhaustion both physical and magical. At that point I probably could have gone back to my lab and kept working, if that was what it took to see things through to the end.

But it wasn’t. Not this time.

The case was in the hands of law enforcement now, at least until they could come up with a lead solid enough for me to follow. There was nothing left for me to do except rest and recover so I could do what needed to be done when the time came.

So I let Thomas’s driver take me to the hospital, and I slept against my brother’s shoulder as we drove. I woke up long enough to insist on entering the hospital through a service entrance to avoid messing up any medical equipment, refuse pain meds and be overruled, and get poked and prodded and have a bag of saline solution hooked up to my arm (apparently I hadn’t lost enough blood to need a proper transfusion), then slept some more. Before I dropped off I was vaguely aware of Thomas pulling a chair up to the hospital bed they’d stuck me in, though I think the part where he held my hand was just a (rare) good dream.

It was the only one I had that night.

I hadn’t exhausted myself so thoroughly as to sleep without dreaming, and the narcotics I’d been given for the pain didn’t help in that department. My dreams were full of half-formed things, distorted shadows with teeth and claws, disembodied hearts beating from within cages of white ribs, and worse things. A ghostly hand spilling out deadly fire at a handsome man turned into my own hand gunning down a silver-haired woman, and as she fell to the ground with her face twisted in surprise and agony I felt warm blood drip down my forehead as though I’d been shot myself.

I recoiled from the vision, a small noise of pain and horror bubbling up from my throat. From somewhere in the dark a voice responded, gently shushing me. A hand stroked across my brow and for a moment I was back in the hospital with Thomas at my side. He gazed down at me with such intensity that it seemed he was trying to see straight through to my soul, in spite of the fact that we’d soulgazed once before.

It was Lasciel. It had to be. This Thomas, tracing his fingertips over my face with such tenderness it almost hurt, could not possibly have been more than an illusion, or a dream.

But instead of trying to seduce me like Lasciel had, the dream-Thomas simply leaned down and whispered into my ear, “Sleep, Harry. Sleep.”

I felt the tension leave my body then, as if some part of me had been waiting for permission to let it go. My eyes fell closed and I sank into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

I came to a few hours later to the sound of voices speaking softly outside my room. Thomas had left my side; I was alone. Strips of gauze had been taped to my arms, and the bag of saline hanging by my bed was nearly empty. I felt ravenous and nauseous all at once, my head buzzing with exhaustion, but I’d woken up too completely to nod off again.

I could hear the low voices speaking just beyond the door, could identify the speakers as Thomas and Murphy but couldn’t make out their words. I was starting to draw my concentration together to Listen in when the door opened and light from the hallway flooded the room.

“You awake, Harry?” Murphy’s voice asked me.

“’M awake,” I confirmed, rubbing one eye with the heel of my hand until she and Thomas had stepped into the room and closed the door behind them. I blinked up at Murphy and saw she was still wearing her formal uniform, her hair uncombed and dark circles starting to form beneath her eyes. She obviously hadn’t slept since we’d parted ways.

“We got Edwards’ mansion cleared,” she informed me, “and I sent the dried blood to the lab for analysis. The fingerprint turned up a match with an unsolved museum robbery in Los Angeles, and a hit in the Missing Persons database. I don’t know the details yet.”

I nodded along as she spoke, though I struggled to actually comprehend her words. She seemed to expect some response from me when she was finished, so I said, “It’s good work, Murph. You should get some sleep now. There’s not a lot we can do until we’ve got more information.”

“I have a few loose ends I want to run down,” she insisted. “In the meantime, you should know that Edwards isn’t too happy about the knife being missing, or the mess we made of his home. I think things might have gotten pretty ugly if you hadn’t left when you did. As it was, the bullet holes in the stairs and the gallery walls were a bit hard to explain in the reports.”

A wry smile touched my lips. “Guess I’m not getting paid for this one, huh?” Thomas snorted. Murphy frowned.

“Actually,” she said slowly, “Edwards said he’d have a check sent to your office by the end of the week. Something about having to make good on his deal with Marcone. Anything you want to tell me about that?”

I frowned, struggling to think back that far. “Marcone made a bet with him: if someone does try to steal the knife with magic, Edwards pays me; if not, Marcone opens his deal with Edwards to renegotiation.”

Murphy’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You promised me you wouldn’t make any deals with Marcone. What do you owe him for that favor?”

“I think it was more a matter of pride for him than anything,” I told her, “since Edwards said he was irrational to vouch for me. He didn’t want anything for setting up the deal.”

“He wanted the truth,” Thomas broke in, gently correcting me. “He wanted to know every detail about the case.”

“What would he care?” Murphy asked.

“He’s got some kind of business with Edwards,” I explained wearily. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s profitable to Marcone; less so for Edwards with their current deal. Either way, it’s important enough that Marcone wants to make sure nothing offs Edwards and messes up his business scheme.”

Murphy frowned, staring at a corner of my bed like she wanted to set it on fire with her eyes. I knew she must be thinking furiously about what business Marcone might have with Edwards, and I felt tired just looking at her.

Thomas edged around Murphy and reclaimed his seat by my bed. He laid his hand over my arm with a casualness that looked almost subconscious, his fingers trailing over the bare skin without brushing the covered wounds. It sent little shivers of pleasure over my skin, and I twitched on reflex. Thomas pulled his hand back, giving me an apologetic look. I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t say anything at all.

After a long stretch of silence, Murphy shook herself from her deliberations on Marcone’s crime empire and turned to look at me.

“Patrick asked me to tell you that he’s very sorry for his role in what happened. He blames himself for the thief getting away. I told him not to worry so much about it.” She gave me a searching look, like she wanted confirmation that she’d said the right thing. I nodded.

“The thief had that shield up before the ward failed,” I told her. “Even if I’d thrown a spell at him instead of protecting Patrick, I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop him.” My words fell like leaden ingots, heavy with despair and finality. I felt so weak, so powerless. I tried to force optimism into my tone. “Besides, Patrick might have done us some good by shooting the thief when he was off guard. That blood is one more link to him we didn’t have before.”

Murphy nodded. “That’s what I figured.” She gave me a knowing look. “So maybe you can stop feeling guilty, yourself. You made the right call by protecting him.”

I blinked at her in surprise, then turned my head away. I hadn’t realized until she said it, but Murphy was right. I had been doubting my actions, wondering whether I had sacrificed an untold number of people when I made the choice to save one. In truth, though, that had never been the choice in front of me. Whatever mistakes I might have made in the time leading up to it, in that moment I couldn’t have prevented the thief’s escape. My choice had been between saving a life and letting it be destroyed. I had done the only thing I could do, under the circumstances.

Kind of like when I killed Bianca and gave the Reds an excuse to start a war.

“I guess so.” I looked back to Murphy. “If you see him again, tell him he has nothing to feel sorry for. In fact, he probably helped us out.”

Murphy nodded, looking satisfied with the change in my mood. “He’s a good kid,” she said. “Maybe a bit reckless, but for the most part he stayed calm under pressure. He seems curious about the work we do at SI. If he’s interested in making the career change, I’d like to have him.”

“And you’ll tempt him with what, the incredible dental plan?” I forced a teasing grin onto my face, feeling my spirits lift a little. “The SI salary couldn’t even pay for the suit he was wearing tonight. No one in their right mind would leave a private security firm to become a cop.”

“Watch it,” Murphy said, giving my foot a thump, “or I might decide to make a career change of my own, and then who would hire your sorry ass?”

“Believe it or not, SI is not my only client,” I pointed out. Murphy rolled her eyes; she knew as well as I did that CPD paid most of my bills. “Besides, you’d never go private practice on me. You love complaining about the bureaucracy too much.”

“You know me so well,” she said blandly. “In fact, I love it so much that I’m going to go meet with Special Crimes and Larceny so that I can complain about how inter-departmental cooperation is a load of crap.” I laughed, which made one of my ribs twinge a bit from behind the thick veil of narcotics, and Murphy returned it with a wry smile.

“Sounds like fun, Murph,” I told her. “But you may want to shower or something first. Brush your teeth, maybe comb your hair.”

Murphy grimaced and looked at her watch. “If I have time. I also wanted to drop by the crime lab and ask if they’ll be able to get anything from the blood.”

I shook my head at her. “I appreciate the update, Murph, but you don’t need to hang around if you’re busy. I’ll be fine. Go hand Johnson his ass and do whatever else you need to do, then get some rest.” I could see her deliberating, and I added, “You’ll be no use to anyone if you’re too tired to shoot straight.”

Murphy snorted. “No,” she said dryly, “I suppose not.” She laid a hand on my arm with a tired smile. “I’ll let you know when we’ve made any solid progress. Until then, you rest up too.” Then she turned to Thomas. “Make sure he actually rests and doesn’t do anything stupid.”

I frowned at Murphy. “I’m not going to go looking for trouble while I’m injured.” She acted like I hadn’t even spoken, still looking to Thomas for his answer.

“Why do I have to babysit him?” my brother asked. For a moment I thought he was going to say I was a big boy and could take care of myself, but then he added, “Let Mouse do it. If Harry tries to get out of bed, Mouse can just sit on him.”

Murphy rolled her eyes. “Because,” she said reasonably, “the dog can’t call either of us if Harry gets himself in trouble. Besides, I don’t think sitting on him would be good for his injuries. You’ll just have to take one for the team.” She slapped his shoulder in a gesture that was probably meant to be encouraging. Thomas just looked pained.

“If anything happens on your end, or it Harry manages to get himself into trouble somehow…” Murphy glared at me, and I put on an expression of injured innocence. “Call me,” she finished. “I’ll be up for another few hours at least.”

“Yes ma’am, Lieutenant,” Thomas answered with a smirk and a mock salute. Murphy gave him a withering glare only slightly less intense than the one she would have given me for the same comment, then squeezed my hand one last time and left. Thomas and I watched the door until the sound of her footsteps faded away into the silence of the night.

Then I turned to him and said, “I need to get out of here.”

It took a few minutes of arguing, but after I promised to take my pills without complaint Thomas agreed to help me check out. Leaving the hospital against medical advice probably qualified as doing something stupid in Murphy’s book, but it would be better for everyone if I didn’t hang around. Every minute I spent in a hospital was a risk for those around me. I had shorted out televisions, call buttons, and even a heart monitor in the past, and I had no desire to do the same to someone’s life support.

The call button in my room was already shot, so Thomas fetched a nurse from the station down the hall to help remove my IV and check me out. She didn’t like it much, but I begged lack of insurance (which wasn’t exactly a lie) as a reason for cutting my stay as short as possible, and she finally relented. She did insist on taking me to the door in a wheelchair, though.

We stepped out into a cold and misty spring morning, the sky still dark except for a tiny strip of purple on the eastern edge of the horizon. I heard Thomas breathe a sigh of relief at my side when we cleared the doors. I glanced in his direction and saw him close his eyes and take a breath, his features schooled into a mask of neutrality.

He’d never stated it outright, but I’d gathered from some of the things he’d said that Thomas didn’t like hospitals much either. He had a hard enough time fighting off the Hunger around healthy people; weakened prey was a much greater temptation. Even if his control never broke and he never hurt anyone, I knew it must be excruciating. Like stumbling upon an oasis after being stranded in the desert, and refusing to drink a drop.

But he had been willing to endure that, to stay by my side while I was injured.

I tried to imagine what it must have been like for him, sitting for hours in a dark room unable to even turn on the TV to distract himself from his Hunger, knowing that he had only to walk into any of the rooms on the hall to satisfy it and yet refusing to do so. He could have left the hospital to escape the temptation, even picked up a willing partner somewhere for a little nibble to take the edge off. That would have been easier on him, certainly. But it also would have meant leaving me injured and alone, unprotected if trouble came to call. He had been unwilling to do that, no matter how hard it was for him to sit with me.

I shivered, pulling my duster more tightly around myself, and looked away from him. Thomas rarely talked about his feelings, and he’d never told me he loved me even in a normal brotherly way, but his actions at times like this spoke volumes about how much he cared. I was glad we were getting out of there, for the patients’ sake and more importantly for his.

There was a taxi stand near the entrance of the hospital, and an enterprising cabbie was actually waiting there on the off change that someone like me was stubborn enough to check out at the ass-crack of dawn. Thomas and I took the cab back to my apartment, riding in silence the whole way. When we arrived I deactivated the wards I had placed around my home, let Thomas haul the warped security door from its frame, and then replaced the wards behind us. That little expenditure of magic tired me a lot more than it usually did; enough that I made an executive decision to sink down on the couch instead of risking passing out on the way to the bedroom.

The effects of the narcotics I’d been given were starting to wear off. The hazy veil that had been keeping the pain at a distance was wearing thin, and I could feel the dull ache in my arms growing stronger by the minute. Between that and the exhaustion I felt like crap, so I leaned my head back against the couch and closed my eyes.

I heard Thomas opening cabinets in the kitchen, probably getting himself something to eat. It occurred to me that I should eat too. The finger sandwiches before the party hadn’t been much of a meal. Between the drugs and the residual nausea of blood loss I wasn’t feeling very hungry yet, but I knew I had to eat to keep my strength up.

I’d go get some food, I decided, just as soon as I worked up the motivation and motor skills to stand up from the couch.

Mister had been napping in his spot at the corner of the room, but the noise of our arrival must have woken him. He wandered out into the center of the room and regarded me impassively from the floor. Then he leapt up to the armrest of the couch I was sitting on, climbed up to the back of it, and curled up next to my head.

Mouse came over from the kitchen and put his chin on my knee. He let out a breath that was almost a whimper and looked up at me with worried doggie eyes. “Just don’t say ‘I told you so,’” I mumbled. He huffed a little more loudly and shoved his head under my hand. I was smiling a little as I pet him. It felt good to be loved.

I sat there for a few moments, smoothing my hand over the soft fur of Mouse’s ears and hearing Mister’s steady purr in my own. After a while my mind started to drift. I might have fallen asleep, but as I shifted to get more comfortable I became suddenly aware of the sensation of my shirt sticking to my skin. Under my duster I was still wearing the tuxedo jacket and shirt that had been soaked with my blood, and I could feel it plastered against my skin, still sticky in places. It was kind of interfering with my ability to relax and unwind.

I sat up and started to pull the duster off, moving carefully because of my injuries. (Even that movement was too much of a disruption for Mister, and he relocated to the top of a bookcase.) Bending my elbows too much pulled at the scabbed-over wounds all along my outer arms, and it hurt quite a bit. Maybe not as much as if I’d let the drugs wear off completely, but enough that I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I tried to touch my shoulders. I had no stiches to prevent the wounds from reopening.

“Need a hand?” Thomas asked me. He had returned from the kitchen bearing a plate of food in one hand and a candle in the other. Lighting. I knew I’d forgotten something.

“I’ve got it,” I told him, grunting with pain and effort. I didn’t want help with something as simple as taking off my coat. Besides, I was sure I could do it- it would just take some trial and error.

I was reluctant to bend my arms much, but it proved impossible to remove the duster while keeping them straight. I just hoped that bending a little wouldn’t reopen the wounds. After a few minutes of fumbling I managed to get the duster down from my shoulders, at which point I had to pause and take a few breaths to stop my head from spinning. Then I focused on sliding the coat off one arm and then off the other. By the time it was done I was panting from the exertion to muscles I rarely used, and a sluggish pain was pounding in my head and arms.

Thomas had watched the entire affair without comment. I turned my head towards him without lifting it from the back of the couch. “Told you I didn’t need help.”

Thomas shook his head. “So you did it by yourself. Good for you.” The edge of bitterness in his voice surprised me. “I didn’t ask because I thought you couldn’t do it; I asked because I wanted to spare you some pain. Just because you _can_ do something alone doesn’t mean you should.”

I stared at him for a moment, stunned. I had expected some brotherly teasing, and his response had caught me off guard. Thomas had never spoken to me like that before. “You sound like Murphy,” I said at last. “Or Michael. Or maybe Billy the werewolf.”

Thomas snorted. “God forbid.”

I watched him for a moment, my drug-hazed mind slowly piecing things together. I knew it annoyed and worried him when I got myself into messy situations, but he could understand that I was usually doing it to protect people. Causing myself pain out of sheer stubbornness when it served no purpose probably frustrated him a lot more. Not only that, but he had offered me his help and I’d refused. Thomas had a lot of pride. He wouldn’t say openly that he’d been worried about me, or that he was glad I was okay. Taking care of me was one of the few ways he could express that, and I’d thrown it back in his face. If I’d been in his position, I’d have gotten snippy, too.

But Thomas wouldn’t. Not normally, anyway. Normally he’d chalk it up to me being socially inept and too stubborn for my own good, and if I saw how much it bothered him it would only be because I knew him well enough to see through an act. Tonight, instead of putting up a façade, he’d actually let some of his frustration show through. That meant that he was probably under a lot of stress, between the fight and my injuries and the Hunger. It wouldn’t kill me to show a little compassion.

I let out a steadying breath and licked my lips. “I don’t know if I can do it myself two more times. Does that offer still stand?”

Thomas considered me for a moment, then his eyes softened. “I suppose,” he said with mock reluctance. “Since you need me.” Maybe it was the muted light from the single candle, but at that moment I thought I saw something behind his playful expression; something wistful and tender. I felt my heart speed up and tore my eyes away before he noticed I was staring.

My gaze came to rest on the plate in his hand; cold pizza slices left over from a pie we’d ordered in. My stomach growled. I aimed a hopeful smile at my brother. “I don’t suppose any of those are for me?”

“I might be tempted to share,” Thomas said lightly, “since I know you shouldn’t take meds on an empty stomach.” He held out a pair of pills to me, a horsepill of an antibiotic and a smaller painkiller. I was hurting enough at that point that I didn’t even bother pretending I didn’t want them.

I held out my hand and he dropped the pills into it, then went to the kitchen to bring me a glass of water. I started to lift my hand to pop the pills, but had to stop long before I reached my mouth. It was just too painful to bend my arm that much, and I was sure I would open the wounds again.

This time Thomas didn’t wait for me to ask for help. He plucked the pills from my hand and held them up. “Open,” he said, and I obliged. He dropped the antibiotic into my mouth and raised the glass to my lips so I could wash it down, then repeated the process with the other pill. I avoided his eyes during the whole affair, feeling my cheeks burn with humiliation.

“Don’t rub it in,” I mumbled when Thomas took the empty glass from my lips.

He glanced at me before leaning over to pick up the plate of pizza. “I didn’t think I was.”

I didn’t have an answer to that. It was true; he hadn’t been.

I couldn’t lift a slice of pizza to my mouth any more than I could a glass of water, so Thomas had to feed me as well. It was almost comical in a way, him sitting next to me with a pizza slice in each hand, one held before his own mouth and the other extended to mine. Neither of us spoke while we ate, and I kept my eyes on my food. It’s a good thing pizza tastes good cold; starting up the wood-burning stove to heat it was more than either of us was willing to do at that point. Mouse retired to the kitchen after begging a few pieces of pepperoni, then Thomas and I played rock-paper-scissors for the last slice. I’m pretty sure he let me win.

By the time I had finished eating, the pain had started to recede a bit and I was feeling much calmer. Sleepier, too. If it hadn’t been for the blood still plastering my shirt to my side, I might have nodded off. “Can I get a hand, here, or are you going to leave me like this all night?” I asked Thomas.

“My, aren’t you demanding?” He set the plate aside and stood up, then walked around the couch behind me to help me shrug off what was left of the tuxedo jacket. The doctors had cut away the sleeves of both the jacket and the shirt beneath it, which made for a pretty bizarre fashion statement. I was sure Murphy would have some things to say about the cost of the rental tux, once everything was said and done.

Thomas tossed the ruined jacket to the ground, then disappeared into the bedroom for the first-aid kit. I stared down at the tux. Even on the black fabric, my blood showed up as a dark stain. I shivered a little, and felt goosebumps break out on my bare arms.

Thomas returned with the kit, as well as a bowl of water and a washcloth. He set it all to one side, then sat next to me on the couch, took my arm, and started peeling back the gauze that had been taped over my wounds. The scabs had broken at both of my elbows thanks to my overexertion, and fresh blood was oozing from the cracks. I half expected Thomas to comment on how I’d brought it on myself, but he didn’t say anything; just dabbed antibiotic ointment over the cracks to seal them. When he was satisfied that my stubbornness hadn’t caused any major damage, he redressed the wounds and packed the first-aid kit away. Then without a word he knelt before me and started to undo the buttons of my dress shirt.

I watched Thomas while he worked. It was impossible not to. This was like something out of a dream, and if it weren’t for the pain I still felt I might have thought it was some drug-induced fantasy. Thomas knelt between my legs, undressing me with sure, practiced motions. He didn’t speak, not even to make any teasing remarks. He glanced up at me, once, like he was checking in, then focused back on his hands. There was a flush across his cheeks and down his pale neck, but I chalked it up to the awkwardness of the situation. Dwelling on other possibilities would only give me false hope, and I had decided long ago not to entertain that.

Still, that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy what was happening.

When he’d finished opening the shirt, Thomas stood and pushed it back from my shoulders, his fingertips grazing my bare skin. He didn’t meet my eyes, didn’t even look at my face. He moved slowly; not in a sensual manner, but more like he was focusing on the task in front of him and every motion it entailed. He slid the fabric down my arms, his hands stroking over my biceps, then maneuvered it over my hands and tossed it aside.

There was dried blood on my chest and my sides, where it had spilled and seeped through the fabric. Thomas dipped the washcloth he’d brought into the bowl of water and wiped it gently over my skin. The water was cold, and I shivered. I needed the excuse. It had been a very, very long time since someone had touched me like this. Tenderly, intimately. Tending my wounds and making me clean.  It wasn’t just the physical sensations that were overwhelming.

When Thomas finished cleaning up my blood, he dropped the cloth back into the bowl. The water in it had turned a sort of pinkish shade that reminded me of the not-quite-human color of Thomas’s blood. He sat on the floor below me and removed my shoes, my socks. Then he looked up at me.

Thomas’s eyes went to my belt buckle, and a flicker of- something, passed across his face. Uncertainty? Regret? Discomfort? I couldn’t quite tell. Then he turned his head away and rose to his feet. “I’m sure you can take care of the rest yourself,” he said to me.

I felt a flutter of disappointment in my chest, even though I hadn’t really expected anything different. Of course Thomas wasn’t going to take my pants off for me. It was a small miracle that he’d touched me as much as he had. Thomas didn’t talk about his feelings, and he avoided physical closeness with anyone he knew. The only intimacy in his life was when he fed, and in many ways what we’d just done was more profound than that.

Well, it was probably for the best. Who knew how my body would have reacted if he’d tried to unzip my pants?

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I can do it.” My mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls. For that matter, so did my brain. The narcotics were kicking in, big time.

My fingers fumbled with the belt buckle, slipping around the smooth leather and metal. They felt too thick, too heavy to do what I was demanding of them. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying hard to concentrate on the feel of the buckle beneath my fingertips and the movement of my hands. After several tries, I finally managed to get it.

I opened my eyes to see Thomas hovering nearby, his expression pained. “What?” I asked.

Thomas made a face. “That hurt to watch.”

I tried to glare at him, but my heart wasn’t in it. It took too much effort. “Well, excuse me for being drugged and helpless.”

Thomas rolled his eyes. He leaned towards me suddenly, and before I could even yelp in surprise he’d unbuttoned and unzipped my fly. I knocked his hands away and covered myself, sputtering as I stared at him in astonishment. The sudden movement had triggered a sort of fight-fly-freeze response, and that was the only reason I hadn’t gotten embarrassingly hard from the light touch.

Thomas didn’t draw back immediately. Instead he took hold of the fabric of my pants to either side of my thighs. I started to squirm, to ask him what he thought he was doing, but before I could get the words out he’d given the pants a quick tug, and they were off. I stared at Thomas while he straightened and stepped away. He refused to look me in the eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Thomas complained as he folded the pants over his arm. “It was going to take you another hour to do it by yourself. It’s not like I fondled you or anything.”

I choked on air and started coughing. Thomas eyed me askance; like he wasn’t entirely convinced I wouldn’t suffocate on my own saliva. Then his eyes flicked to my last article of clothing.

The coughing fit subsided immediately. I was overcome with the sudden urge to run away. Not that I was afraid of what Thomas planned to do; I trusted his hold on the Hunger, and I knew he wouldn’t molest me for any other reasons. He might tease, but it was only that- teasing. What scared me was how my body might react to the teasing, and how Thomas might respond to my reaction.

“I think the underwear can stay,” I said, my voice rough.

It seemed to me like Thomas hesitated, just a fraction of a second, before responding. Then he heaved a dramatic sigh, as if I were making some incredibly onerous request. “Well, if you _insist_.”

“You know me,” I said. “Modest as a schoolboy.” Thomas snorted in response. He tossed the folded pants on the floor with the jacket and shirt, then picked up the pizza plate and took it to the kitchen.

We were both silent while Thomas put away the first-aid kit, and while he washed out the bowl and washcloth, and disposed of the old bandages and ruined clothes. The teasing was over, and neither of us seemed to know what to say. It seemed to me that Thomas’s expression was somewhat troubled, but I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Maybe he was worried about my injuries. Maybe he felt guilty for pushing the teasing so far.

Maybe he was annoyed about having to babysit. No doubt there were other things he would rather be doing now.

Thomas finished washing the blood off of his hands and came to stand at the edge of the living room, drying his hands on a paper towel. His brows furrowed in concern as his eyes swept over me. I felt my body flush with embarrassment and arousal, and I shifted uncomfortably on the couch. I needed to retreat to my bedroom before I did something I couldn’t undo.

“You should get some rest,” my brother echoed my thoughts. “It’s been a long day. You look like you were mauled by a slavering monster from the Nevernever- oh, wait.”

I rolled my eyes. “You say the nicest things.”

With some effort, I heaved myself up from the couch. I stumbled in a sudden bout of lightheadedness the moment I gained my feet, but managed to catch myself before Thomas could grab my arm to steady me. He had crossed the room in the space of a breath, but when he saw I was stable he stepped back. Thomas’s eyes searched my face. He didn’t voice it, but I could hear the question clear as day: “Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

“I’ll be fine,” I told him. He didn’t look convinced. “Really,” I insisted, “a little sleep, a little food, maybe a nice shiatsu massage, and I’ll be good as new.”

Thomas arched a brow. “Shiatsu massage? Little brother, given how your love life is going, I’d say you need the kind with a happy ending.” I could feel my face go pink, and I stammered out an embarrassed denial. Thomas smirked at me, and I had the sudden sense that we were teetering on the razor’s edge between brotherly ribbing and sexual come-ons.

Before I could get too worked up, Thomas abruptly broke the tension by bending down and picking up my Mickey Mouse alarm clock that was still sitting out from that morning. “You’d better take this with you,” he told me. “I’m not sure I have the self-control not to break it if I hear it ring.”

“I won’t tempt you,” I said, taking it back. I saw something flicker in his expression, as though he might have read more meaning into the words than I’d intended. But it was gone before I’d fully processed it, so I set it aside in my thoughts.

I looked down at the alarm clock, still set for seven AM, and grimaced. “Tomorrow comes early,” I said, “but it’d better not be that early.”

“Tomorrow can leave a message on the answering machine,” Thomas said dryly, “if she gets something from the crime lab before we wake up.”

I imagined Murphy calling in another hour or so, still awake and ready to fight crime on a tank full of caffeine and zero sleep, and demanding that I do the same. For her sake and mine, I hoped she went to bed before the crime lab found anything, and that she slept for a long, long time.

“Sounds good to me. I’m going to go rest and not do anything stupid.” Thomas snorted, and I grinned. “Good night,” I told him, turning to go to my bedroom.

“Sleep tight,” Thomas answered. I could feel his eyes on my back, and was painfully aware that I was nearly naked. I felt exposed, vulnerable, and it made me want to run away and hide. I forced the instinct down, and walked calmly to the door of the bedroom.

When I got inside I paused for a moment to close the door and lean upon it. Then I shuffled over to my bed and collapsed. I buried my face in my pillow. I remembered the sight of Thomas sleeping in my bed the previous morning. I remembered how he had looked up at me when he’d awoke, his eyes blurry with sleep and his hair tousled. I smiled. The sheets still smelled like him.

Maybe it was kind of pathetic, to draw the sheets over me and breathe in the scent of someone who would never lie next to me in bed. Maybe it was kind of creepy, too. But it was also the closest I would ever get to sleeping with him at my side, and I’d learned to take what I could get. So I curled up in those sheets that smelled of Thomas and remembered the way his fingers had felt on my skin moments before, and I fell asleep with a sad little smile on my face.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd wanted to get this posted a while ago, but I've been very busy. Hopefully the next chapters will be up sooner.

I woke to the sound of claws scrabbling at my door, and only after I had processed and identified that sound did I notice the telephone ringing in the background. It was muffled by a silencing spell I’d placed on the door, an attempt to block out the sounds of Thomas, shall we say, “entertaining” his dates, while still allowing me to hear when anyone called or knocked. It did a good job of the former, less so with the latter, and if someone called or came calling while I was asleep or in my lab I generally relied on Thomas or Mouse to alert me.

Still, it was better than having the sounds of my brother having sex in the next room drift through the door to me while I tried to sleep. The first time it had happened, I had nearly died of embarrassment.

Well. Embarrassment, and also blue balls.

But the less said about that, the better. It was a good thing that the shower, with its perpetually icy water, was on this side of the door to the living room, and I had put up the silencing spells the next morning.

Just outside my door, where the spell was weakest, the scrabbling continued.

I groaned and shoved the blankets to one side, exposing my body to the cold subterranean air. “Okay, okay,” I mumbled as I hauled myself to my feet. “Didn’t we decide to let the answering machine get it?”

I opened the door on Mouse, and the big dog promptly sat back and wagged his tail. I looked at the door, which from the sound of things ought to have scratches in it but in fact did not, and then scowled at my dog. “Couldn’t you have just woken Thomas?”

Mouse looking in the direction of my couch, and I followed his gaze and saw that the blanket Thomas usually slept with was draped over the back. Thomas was already up. A quick glance around the room told me he must be out, too, because he was nowhere to be seen.

I felt a little thrill of panic rise in response, and then forced it down. There was no way something could have gotten through my wards to take him without waking me. He had probably just stepped out for a bite, of one kind or another. And if he’d gotten up earlier than I had, well, he hadn’t taken any narcotics before going to bed.

Speaking of that, how long had I slept, anyway?

Mouse blinked at me patiently, then turned his head in the direction of the kitchen and the still-ringing phone. “Okay,” I told him, “I can take a hint.”

I trudged into the kitchen and picked up the phone, leaning heavily on the counter as I held the receiver to my ear. “This is Dresden; who’s calling?”

“Harry. Murphy.” Her voice was crisp, almost rushed. There was an angry edge to her words that sounded fiery rather than surly. I estimated that Murphy had gotten in at least a few hours of sleep, and that whatever her current mood, it was a vast improvement from what it might have been. “We’ve got the thief.”

I blinked. “You what?”

“Not in custody,” Murphy clarified. “But there was an ID from the print, and an old photo. We got a sketch artist to do an aged-up version that ran with the morning news on the attack at the party. People called in reporting sightings. A lot of it was bogus, but we got some solid information. Special Crimes has our thief in a hotel near the docks, and they’re about to make a raid.”

“Raid?” I repeated. It takes more than a handful of seconds to get my brain firing on all cylinders. Still, even with half I knew that a police raid was a bad idea. Half a dozen armed cops isn’t the kind of threat to a wizard that it would be to a vanilla mortal, but it’s still more than enough to motivate a wizard to defend himself with extreme prejudice. “That’s suicide, Murph! They don’t know what they’re up against. They’ll be killed.”

“That’s why I’m calling you,” she replied grimly. “We need to go in first to make sure no one gets hurt. I only just got word of this, and it should take a few minutes at least for them to get ready to move. Johnson wants to hit the hotel in force: SWAT team, flash-bang grenades, the works.”

The works. That would be a much greater threat, and likely to incite a much greater force in response.

“Where do you want me?” I asked.

“Outside your door,” she replied. “I’ll be there in just a second.”

Murphy hung up.

I stared at the phone for a moment in stunned silence.

Then Mouse nudged my leg with his big head, hard enough that I stumbled, and it brought me back to myself. I rushed into my bedroom to pull on some clothes, prioritizing that over showering or eating. It hurt like hell, but it couldn’t have been too bad since I didn’t bleed through the bandages. I didn’t have time to be delicate. Murphy had said she would be there in a second, and given the timeframe we were working with I doubted she was exaggerating by much.

Sure enough, a car horn blared in a single, long blast outside my door while I was struggling to pull my second sock on. After a cursory pat-down to check that my tools were still in my pockets, I bounded out the door into what proved to be a sunny but cold afternoon, shoes in hand and one sock half-off. I spent only the barest amount of energy re-arming my wards before flinging open the passenger door and diving in.

Murphy barely gave me time enough to slam the door before she was peeling out onto the streets, the little light on her dashboard flashing bright red and blue. I pulled my sock on the rest of the way and started lacing up my shoes while we drove.

I normally don’t like to rush things. No wizard does. Time to pre-plan is one of the greatest advantages in our line of work. Not all spellwork can be done on the fly. There are a number of things, like thraumaturgy, that require props and at least a few minutes for set-up, and can’t exactly be done while an enemy is bearing down on you. (I’d tried it that way once, when a loup-garou was tearing its way through the station house. It had worked, but how many people had died in the moments it had taken me to prepare the spell?) The quick and dirty kind of magic that can be done on the spot, evocation, isn’t nearly as precise, or as formidable.

Or at least, it wasn’t in my hands. I had seen members of the Wardens, the White Council’s military branch, at work the previous Halloween. They had done things on the fly that I would never have dreamed possible. But I guess that’s what they were trained to do.

The point was, I wasn’t really looking forward to an impending firefight with another wizard, especially with even less time to prepare than I’d had last night. But I didn’t have much choice in the matter. If I let Johnson and his boys storm the place like they wanted to, some of them would probably die. The thief had shown with that fireball last night that he didn’t mind killing people if they got in his way. Johnson’s team would have no idea how to defend themselves against something like that, and next to no chance of preventing the thief’s escape.

I was getting a second crack at this guy. Damned if I was going to let him slip through my fingers again on account of some bully cop’s incompetence.

Murphy flicked off and stowed her light as soon as we got off the main roads. I figured most people in the neighborhood we were headed for would still be able to identify it as a cop car by the make and model, but we weren’t going to throw away the element of surprise by rolling up with the lights flashing. Besides, the thief was from out of town; he may not know the look of unmarked CPD vehicles.

Murphy pulled up at a shabby-looking little no-tell motel, killed the engine, and stepped out. I followed her. “What room?”

“Two-oh-three,” Murphy answered. “Last I heard, the owner was going to try to clear out the other guests to get them to safety, but I don’t know if he’s done it yet. We have to assume there are civilians present.”

“Right,” I said, considering the building. It was a squat, two-story affair with doors on the outside. More than one of them looked like it might be the semi-permanent residence of a local street walker; another, with a faded happy face sticker, might have been used to broker drug deals. Room Two-Oh-Three would have been on the second story around the other side of the building from where Murphy and I stood.

“Thomas didn’t come?” Murphy asked me.

I glanced at her. “He wasn’t home. I was sleeping until you called, so I don’t know when he left or when he’s coming back. Have you heard from him?”

“Not since last night,” Murphy replied. “But I never tried to call him.” She read my concern and added, “I’m sure he’s fine. Right now we need to focus on this.” Her voice went steely. “If we don’t do this right, people might die. If the thief escapes and gets that knife to the warlock, people will definitely die.”

There’s a special sort of anxiety people experience when they think their family members might be in danger, which turns into outright terror if that danger is confirmed. It makes them utterly irrational, and prone to erratic and self-sacrificing behavior. In the days before I knew Thomas was my brother, when I was looking at the phenomenon from the outside, I’d called it familial dementia. Now I just called it family.

It was damn hard to push that anxiety aside, but I did it. I thought of the lives that could be lost if the thief escaped me a second time, and the lives that had already been stained because of his actions. I drew up the image of Natalie’s terrified, bloodied face, and felt a nice familiar rage kindle in my chest. Murphy might call me a pig for it, but seeing women in danger makes me almost as irrational as seeing my brother in danger. The difference is that I can trust Thomas to handle most things for himself. If I wanted to keep there from being more Natalies, I was going to have to stop the thief here. I couldn’t afford to be sidetracked.

“I’ve got it,” I assured Murphy. “So. How do you want to play it?”

She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “I’m not a big fan of the direct approach.”

“No,” I agreed, a wry smile tugging at the corners of my lips.

“Can you hex open a keycard lock?” Murphy asked me

“I could hex it, but I’m not sure that would make it open.”

“I’ll talk to the manager, then. You wait here.”

I frowned at that. “Why?”

“Because if things go badly, Johnson will want answers about why we made a move before he did. You might still be able to put a stop to things, but not if you’re locked up in an interrogation room.” Murphy spoke steadily, reasonably. She didn’t mention that if things went badly and she was known to have been involved, she might lose her job, or worse. Johnson might think she had tipped off the thief, thereby aiding and abetting a fugitive. Even if I was on the outside and able to do some good, Murphy might end up in prison.

But I couldn’t get the key in her place. Aside from the fact that I might mess up the magnetic strip and render it useless, Murphy was right that I couldn’t afford to be spinning my wheels in a holding cell if the thief escaped. Besides, someone in CPD would eventually recognize me as one of SI’s consultants, and it would lead them to Murphy anyway. I’d just have to make sure this didn’t go badly. If we caught the thief, how much could Johnson complain, really?

The answer to that was probably more than I’d like, but there wasn’t anything else I could do. I waited while Murphy went into the motel office. She came out a short time later holding a little piece of plastic the size of a credit card, along with a piece of paper that looked like a diagram of fire exits.

Murphy handed me the map and waved at the little cell of a room marked 203. “The rooms on either side are empty. The second to the right isn’t. We’ve got about two minutes before Johnson shows up.”

I grimaced. “Okay. What’s the plan?”

“Circle around the right,” Murphy told me. “I’ll take the left. We meet at the door. I’ll open it, and then we move. If you feel power building, disrupt it if you can. Try to give me some warning if a spell’s coming.”

“You want me to take him down?” I asked. Murphy shook her head.

“I’m the one with the cuffs and badge, remember?” she asked with a smile. “I want you to keep an eye out for any nasty surprises.”

We exchanged a meaningful glance that was cut short because neither of us wanted to risk a soulgaze. We turned away from one another and began to circle the building. I knew that we were both thinking the same thing: the last time we’d stormed a warlock’s home base there had been more of us, and we’d been better prepared and better armed. Kravos had summoned a demon, and it was only because my friend Michael had been there to destroy it that we had succeeded in capturing him. Of course, capturing Kravos had only been the beginning. He’d done a lot worse before he’d gone down, and left some pretty nasty psychic scars on everyone involved.

I’d had a sample of his hair and, because thraumaturgy involves making something happen on a small scale and then reproducing it on a larger scale, a Ken doll to use as a focus. I didn’t have either of those things now. I would just have to hope that, with the element of surprise on our side, we would be able to neutralize our man before he had time to prepare a spell. Kravos had been in the middle of a summoning when we moved on him. I doubted our thief was summoning up demons in a hotel room. Then again, he’d summoned Fells in a dozen places before, so the lack of a summoning circle obviously didn’t matter.

All of this and more was going through my head as I moved up the staircase and down a corridor towards the thief’s room. I moved with my left hand trailing against the wall, questing out with my senses for any hint of magical energies. If there was a ward over the door, I would have to force it, and then the thief would know we were there. And that was assuming I could get past it at all; not a sure thing, given what I’d seen of his spellwork.

I rounded the corner of the building and came onto the balcony that served as a hallway connecting all the odd-numbered rooms. At the other end of the building, I could see Murphy do the same. She had her gun drawn, pointed down. She nodded to me, and I began to move forward. Room 203 was closer to her end of the building than mine, so I had farther to go.

A door swung open abruptly in front of me. I had time to prepare a spell, realize that firing it off would probably kill an innocent bystander, and stop the spell, but not to bring up a hand to prevent the door from smacking me in the nose. I let out an undignified yelp, and the woman on the other side jumped in surprise.

“Ohmigosh, I’m sorry!” she cried, pulling the door back. “I didn’t know anyone was there!” She was young, enough that I felt bad noticing how scantily she was dressed, and her hair was an unnatural shade of red. Dollar bills stuck out of a bra her shirt didn’t quite cover. I tried to assure her that I was alright, but my voice came out a little garbled: my nose was bleeding. At the other end of the hallway, I saw Murphy smack herself in the forehead.

The curtains of room 203 rustled, and my instincts started ringing alarm bells. I pushed the girl against the wall, out of sight from the window, and put my hand over her mouth to cut off the stream of apologies. She tensed with fear, but didn’t try to scream or fight me off. The curtain pulled back a bit, and I could imagine someone inside the room looking around. Then after a few moments the curtain settled back into its former position. I let out a breath of relief.

“Ma’am,” I told the girl, taking my hand from her mouth and stepping back, “this is police business. A dangerous fugitive is in the building. For your safety, I need to ask you to leave.”

She eyed me suspiciously, taking note of the leather duster and the rune-carved stick in my hand. “You don’t look like a cop.”

I put on my best professional smile. “I’m a consultant.”

I guess my professional smile could use some work, because she went from skeptical to downright cagey. “Okay,” she said in that carefully reasonable tone usually reserved for belligerent drunks. “I’ll clear out.” She edged around me and down the hall to the corner, never once showing me her back. I shook my head.

I raised my left hand to my nose and then pulled it back. With all the burn scars I couldn’t feel much with that hand, but I could see the blood on the black leather glove just fine. I scowled down at it. I wasn’t worried about the injury slowing me down so much as the possibility of the thief getting ahold of some of my blood. That could have some very fatal consequences.

But then, if he’d bothered to examine his pet’s claws the other night he’d have a sample of my blood all the same.

I wiped my hand on my pants and signaled Murphy to move forward.

We met at the door of 203, both of us crouching low so as not to be visible from the window or the peephole. I held my left hand out an inch or so from the door, feeling for the ward I knew must be there. Sure enough, it was, though it was nowhere near as powerful as it could have been. Apparently the thief was quite confident that no one would be able to find him here; this ward was meant to keep out prowlers and discourage thieves, not to stand up against a full-fledged wizard.

I nodded to Murphy. “Warded,” I whispered. “But I can bust it down pretty easily.”

“How long?” she all but mouthed back.

“Second or two.”

Murphy nodded. “On my signal, then.” She held the keycard next to the lock and extended a closed fist towards me. I gathered in energy as I watched her count out one finger, two fingers, three, then released it all at the patterns of energy protecting the door. At the same moment Murphy plunged the keycard into the lock. Blue sparks rippled out over the surface of the door like a wave, meeting red sparks in a flash of purple and flowing over them. The light on the lock turned green (a minor miracle given all the magic flowing around it just then), and Murphy ripped the keycard out and flung the door open.

The thief must had heard or felt the ward failing. As the door opened I heard a sharp and distinctly feminine cry of surprise that sent my brain screeching to a halt. Like I said, I get irrational about women being in danger. If there was a woman in there with the thief, a woman in danger…

I felt energy building. Murphy didn’t give the thief the opportunity to fire it off. She launched herself through the door, slamming into someone hard enough to knock the breath out of them before they could speak a spell.

I stepped into the room, watching them grapple. There was no one in the room besides the two of them, and while I couldn’t see much of the thief’s looks with them moving so much, the elbow-length dark hair marked her as female. I gulped. I’m not unwilling to hit girls if I have to, but I’ve got to fight every instinct I’ve got in order to do it.

The thief still held that gathered power, just waiting for the chance to take a breath and fire it off. As long as Murphy was in range, I couldn’t counter it with a spell of my own. “She’s got a spell ready, Murph,” I called. “Don’t give her the chance to say it!” Murphy caught my eye over the thief’s head and nodded, redoubling her efforts.

Usually us magic-wielding types will get so used to using magic for everything that actually fighting someone –or shooting them with a gun- is something we never consider. But this woman was more than willing to fight, and fight dirty. She pulled hair, tried to gouge eyes, even sank her teeth into Murphy’s arm. But for all her scrappiness, she had never been trained in martial arts, and from what I could see she didn’t even have much of an edge on Murphy in height or weight.

Murphy got a hold of one of the thief’s arms, twisted her around, and put an arm around her neck, cutting off her air supply and her ability to speak spells. “Dresden, do something!” Murphy yelled to me.

I drew a bag of sand from my duster’s pocket and bent down, pouring it out onto the floor. When the thief saw what I was doing her struggles took on an air of desperation. I could hear her trying to take a breath but letting it out in a cough when Murphy socked her in the gut. She twisted, snapping her head back into Murphy’s chin with a sharp crack, and Murphy’s grip loosened. But by that time I’d been able to complete the circle around them. I poured a bit of will into it and felt it snap closed, cutting her off.

Murphy broke the chokehold and threw the thief physically to the ground, making sure not to let part of her body fall outside the circle. Murphy’s chin was red in a way that suggested she’d have a nice bruise later. She wrenched the woman’s hands behind her back and cuffed her, then hauled her to her feet, rattling off the Miranda rights as she did.

The woman shook her head to clear strands of dark hair from her vision, and for the first time I got a good look at her face.

My jaw dropped open.

I recognized her. She had been at that first crime scene I had stumbled onto with Thomas all those years before. At the time I had thought her another victim like Natalie, and I hadn’t thought of anything other than getting her out as fast as possible. I had never considered that she might be responsible for what was happening.

The woman –girl, really, she wasn’t that old- noticed my surprise and smirked. “You really had no idea, did you?” she asked.

Murphy glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “What’s she talking about, Harry?”

“She was at the office with Natalie,” I said numbly. “I thought she was a victim, so I sent her outside.”

“You underestimated me,” the thief went on. “You never thought that a _girl_ could be capable of that.”

“Hey!” I complained. “I don’t think less of women; I know they can be just as dangerous as men. Hell’s bells, I know plenty of women who are downright terrifying.” I cast a meaningful glance at Murphy, and the thief girl followed my gaze and smiled ruefully.

Murphy was not amused. “If you want to keep your jaw working properly, Dresden, you’ll stop right there. Now get over here and help me.”

“Yes ma’am, lieutenant. Wouldn’t want you to chip another one of my teeth.”

I edged around the circle so that I was just behind the girl, then stepped inside and broke the barrier. I immediately laid my left hand over the girl’s right arm where it was bound behind her, and Murphy stepped back to give me some space. I had little enough use of my maimed fingers, but it was enough for me to curl them loosely around her slender wrist. The left side of the body receives energy, so that’s the side you use to sense magic at work, or the side you shield in order to protect yourself from it. The right side, on the other hand (if you’ll excuse the pun), is the one that sends out energy, so that’s the side that you use to cast spells or wield magical weapons. With my left hand on her right arm, I would be able to sense it immediately if she began gathering magic for another spell, though my left hand wouldn’t be able to counter it.

Which was why I used my right hand to shove my .44 Magnum against her back just below where her arms were crossed.

She stiffened when she felt the muzzle press against her back, and I heard a small gasp of fear escape her. I forced myself to ignore it. She was a girl, sure, but she was a girl who had put lives in danger, maybe even ended some. I couldn’t afford to be delicate with her.

“This is how it’s gonna go,” I growled into her ear. “The three of us are going to go for a nice little ride downtown. If I feel you preparing a spell, I’ll shoot you. If you struggle or try to break my grip, I’ll shoot you. And trust me, being shot through the gut is nasty business. You might survive it, if we get you to a hospital. Then again, you might not. Either way, you’ll be in pain for several hours before it’s over. Understand?”

I heard her swallow and felt her nod. “Good,” I said. “Murph?”

Murphy was making a check of the room, gathering up all the girl’s personal items. “Let’s move,” she said when she’d finished. “Johnson will be here any minute and I don’t want him taking custody of her.” Murphy dropped the keycard onto the bed and hoisted the thief’s black backpack onto her shoulder.

We loaded our prisoner into the back of Murphy’s car. I climbed in the back as well so that I could keep my hand and my gun on her. We pulled out of the parking lot and rounded a corner just as I heard sirens approaching. Murphy let out a sigh of relief from the front seat; we’d missed bully boy Johnson by minutes at most.

We got the girl back to SI and into an interrogation room. Murphy patted her down for weapons while I kept my left hand on her right, and came up with a small switchblade and a thin length of pale wood that I identified as a wand. We took all her jewelry, anything that looked like it had half a chance of being a magical focus. Then Murphy locked her cuffs to the table and I poured a ring of salt around her chair. Only then could we be certain she wouldn’t escape.

We stepped out into the hall and Murphy, bless her, led the way to the coffee maker in the corner of the bull pen. She poured herself a cup and passed me the pot. I dumped spoonfuls of sugar into my mug and then drank, feeling the exhaustion headache that had been threatening in the vicinity of my forehead ease off a bit.

“Okay,” I said to Murphy when I lowered my cup at last, “why didn’t you tell me our thief is a woman?”

Murphy didn’t look at me when she answered. “Would you have been able to do what you needed to, if I had?”

“Of course I would,” I insisted. “Hell’s bells, Murph, she nearly incinerated that kid the other day, and I saw what happened to the girl her pet attacked. She’s a warlock and I’ll do whatever’s necessary to take her down.”

Murphy eyed me for a moment, then nodded. She didn’t apologize. “Her name is Taylor Lin,” Murphy said, handing me a Missing Persons report. I sipped my coffee and looked it over. The photograph stapled to the front showed a much younger version of the girl in the interrogation room, staring into the camera with dull yet defiant eyes. “She was a foster child out in California,” Murphy went on. “Disappeared seven years ago, around the same time she was suspected of having been involved in a home burglary. She was thirteen.”

“Foster child,” I muttered. A familiar ache of loneliness stirred to life in my chest, like an old wound beginning to twinge again. I felt a pang of sympathy for the girl. I had been a foster child. Those had been some of the most painful years of my life, not so much because I’d been treated badly as because I’d known with a horrible certainty that I was alone in the world. That feeling had never really gone away, even after I found some good friends. Not until I found my brother.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Murphy told me. “Foster kids have it rough, but that doesn’t excuse what she did.”

“Might explain a thing or two, though,” I replied. “She probably never had anyone to explain what was going on, when her gift started showing. Never had anyone show her how to use it responsibly.”

“If that’s true,” Murphy said, not unkindly, “then who’s been teaching her? Or do kids just naturally figure out how to throw balls of fire and open doors to the other side and enslave faeries?”

I frowned. Murphy was right, damn it. The fire might come naturally, but the rest sure didn’t. Someone must have been training her.

And more importantly, someone must have been sending her to steal magical artifacts for a big, bloody spell.

“Check her belongings,” I said. “See if you can find the knife she stole, or any other magical artifacts.” I turned away from Murphy, back in the direction of the holding cells.

“What are you going to do?” she asked me.

“I’m going to call Thomas. He should be home by now.”

There was an old, corded phone near the holding cells that prisoners used to make their one phone call. Like most of the technology in SI, it was woefully outdated even by CPD standards, and I could actually get it to work nine times out of ten. Thank God for departmental politics.

I called my home phone and heard it ring. And ring. And ring. And then go to voicemail. I hung up and tried Thomas’s cell. More of the same. That bothered me. We were in the middle of a case, and Thomas had known that we might be getting a call from Murphy at any moment. It made no sense for him to turn his phone off or leave it at home, especially if he knew he was going to be gone a long time. The only reason I could see for him to not be answering his phone, and not coming home, was because something was preventing him from doing so.

I forced myself not to panic. I called the apartment again, got the machine, and left a message for him in case he returned, then called his cell and did the same. I wanted to go home to check if he had left some note that I had missed in my hurry, or go out combing the streets for him, but I resisted the urge. It probably wouldn’t help.

If something had happened to Thomas, good money said it was connected to my current case. And if that was true, then my best means of finding him was sitting in the interrogation room.

I went back to Murphy’s office. She looked up at me over a desk scattered with items from the thief’s backpack. “No dice,” I said.

“No knife,” Murphy answered. “She must have already given it to whomever she’s working for. Nothing here but clothes and toiletries. And these.” She pointed to a corner of the desk that obviously contained everything Murphy had judged possibly magical. Murphy had a good eye for these things by now; I could see the runes carved into the chunky metal bracelet and the ring of silver around the small hand mirror. Definitely magical foci.

Besides the bracelet and mirror there were several odds and ends, but what caught my attention most was a pair of glass jars, like the kind baby food comes in. I picked one up and shook it, watching its contents slosh around. The liquid inside was a translucent red with flecks of white sunk to the bottom, and when I shook it it frothed like dish soap. The second jar was identical, but with black flecks instead of white.

“What is it?” Murphy asked me.

“Potion?” I hazarded a guess. “But they’re usually a uniform color and consistency, and you usually need more than this to have much of an effect.”

Murphy took the jar from my hands. “Something else to ask her about, then.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve had a call from Thomas while I’ve been playing phone tag?” I asked.

Murphy shook her head. “You’re worried about him?”

“He wouldn’t let a call go to voicemail. He knew you were going to call us when you had news.”

Murphy frowned. “You think something’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

Murphy watched me for a moment, then said, “We’ll see what Ms. Lin has to say about it.”

“Good cop, bad cop?”

“I was thinking bad cop, bad warden,” Murphy replied, watching me to judge my reaction.

I considered it. The Wardens, myself included, were charged with hunting down those who broke the Laws on Magic. As far as I knew the girl hadn’t broken any, yet, but it wasn’t any kind of stretch to imagine the Council executing someone on suspicion alone. I’d nearly been on the wrong end of that, once. I didn’t like using it against someone else. But we didn’t have a lot of leverage on the girl, and we had to stop her employer. The threat of Council justice might be enough to make her spill the beans. I nodded to Murphy. I could play it that way, if I had to.

We went back into the interrogation room. The girl, Taylor, was sitting where we’d left her, hands folded on the table before her, eyes closed and taking deep, measured breaths. When the door closed behind us her breathing wavered. She cracked an eye open, peeking at us, then opened both eyes fully.

Murphy sat across from her and calmly laid things out on the table: the file folder containing the reports on the crimes in Chicago, the Missing Persons report, and one of the little jars of stuff from Taylor’s backpack. I leaned against the door and tried to look dour and dangerous. Given everything I’d been through the past few days, it wasn’t that hard.

Taylor’s eyes flicked between us, and then focused on the table in front of her. She didn’t offer up any defense or justification, didn’t even speak at all.

Murphy opened up the manila folder.  “Miss Lin,” she began. The girl stiffened and glanced at me warily. A wizard can do some pretty nasty things if they know a person’s Name, but knowing the letters isn’t all it takes. You need to know how they pronounce their Name, hear it from their lips and be able to replicate their exact cadence and timbre. I had never heard her speak her name, so I couldn’t use it against her. But from the look of things, she didn’t know that.

“Your prints have been found at two crime scenes,” Murphy said, “and your blood was found at the scene of a robbery that took place last night.”

The girl stayed silent. She looked down at her hands and squeezed them more tightly together, like she was trying to keep them from trembling.

“There have been several other thefts around the country with your unique signature,” Murphy went on. “Moreover, you were witnessed at the scene of a crime in which a woman was injured, and you attempted to murder a man last night. With your previous record, it’s enough to ensure that you go away for a very long time. Maybe for life.”

“But that’s if your sentence is left up to the mortal authorities,” I broke in. The lights above us flickered ominously, which wasn’t even an intimidation tactic; just a side-effect of having two wizards in a single room with emotions running high. “The White Council of Wizards will have to conduct its own investigation. If we find that you’ve violated one of the seven Laws of Magic, your punishment will be much more severe.”

Taylor raised her head then, enough to glare daggers at me through the fringe of her bangs. She lowered her eyes just before a soulgaze could begin. Murphy and I exchanged a glance. That wasn’t exactly the reaction we’d been hoping for. The girl didn’t seem surprised or even scared at the threat of the White Council’s justice. She just seemed angry.

“We already know that you’re working for someone else,” Murphy went on, “and that you’ve stolen several magical artifacts for them, including the knife you took last night.”

“Those artifacts you stole are designed to be used for black magic, powered by human sacrifice.” My voice was cold, hard. The girl went rigid in her seat. “Give us the person who hired you and help us recover the artifacts, and the Council may grant you leniency.”

Taylor looked between us again. Her expression had gone from anxious but determined to uncertain and utterly terrified. “You’re lying,” she muttered. “You’re trying to trick me. I’m not saying another word.” She turned away and crossed her arms over the table, as much as she could with her wrists cuffed together.

I blinked at the girl in surprise. Murphy glanced at me and flicked her eyebrows up in silent question. I did the same right back.

Murphy stared at Taylor for a long moment. The she shrugged, swept her papers back into the folder, and stood up. “We’ll leave you to think on it for a while,” Murphy said. “Maybe after a night in central booking you’ll decide you’d rather talk to us.” She crossed the room to the door, and I opened it for her (which earned me a little glare) and stepped through after her.

“That was strange,” Murphy said when I had closed the door behind us. Her brows were furrowed in a frown.

“Definitely,” I agreed.

“What did she think you were lying about?”

“The White Council rarely grants clemency,” I admitted, “so that was sort of a lie.”

“She probably wouldn’t know that,” Murphy objected, “and I don’t think it would get that kind of reaction.” She tapped the folders against her palm. “I don’t like this. I’m going to look through these files again, see if there’s anything we missed.”

I followed Murphy back to her office, deep in thought. I went back over the conversation, what we’d said and how Taylor had responded. I replayed in my mind the exact moment when she’d shut down and refused to listen. Then with a sinking feeling I replayed the entire exchange from the time we’d broken into her hotel, and felt sick to my stomach.

“Murph,” I said softly, “what if she was tricked? What if she never knew what the artifacts were for?”

Before Murphy could answer me I felt a wholly foreign magic buzz across my senses. My head whipped in the direction of the interrogation room just as Taylor started screaming.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

We raced back to the interrogation room, passing other startled cops along the way. My legs are a lot longer than Murphy’s, and I’ve taken up running regularly so I can move when I need to. I got there first and flung open the door, brandishing my blasting rod through the opening.

What I saw made me blink.

Someone, obviously not Taylor since she was still inside my circle, but _someone_ had opened a gate from the Nevernever right into SI’s interrogation room.

And they had sent something pretty nasty-looking through it.

The creature took up almost half of the room, shoving the table and chairs aside to make room for itself. The back of its head and shoulders scraped the ceiling. It had a segmented body like an ant or spider, supported by six jointed legs and covered by a dull, pitted black carapace dotted with sharp-looking spurs. Its business end flowed smoothly into what seemed to be the upper body of a woman wearing heavy plate mail of the same material. Her arms, reminiscent of a praying mantis, ended in wickedly serrated spikes. And she was currently brandishing them not at me, but at the girl.

Taylor had fallen from her chair and was cowering half under the table, her arms twisted above her where they were still cuffed. She stared at the thing in utter horror, tears flowing freely down her face. She was whispering something I couldn’t make out, but the cadence of it sounded less like a spell than a prayer.

In the split-second it took me to process the scene, Spider Lady raised one of her massive spiked arms and brought it down on the girl.

Her claw struck something solid and slid away, throwing her off balance temporarily. My circle. It was still standing, and while it prevented Taylor from mounting any defense of her own, it also kept the monster from skewering her.

“Hey!” I called. “You overgrown excuse for a lobster!”

Spider Lady’s head snapped towards me, and I saw that her mouth was a too-wide expanse of fangs as thick as my blasting rod and as long as my hand, hanging outside of her mouth in a jagged zipper. Her eight eyes were multi-faceted, bulbous masses of red, and she tilted her head to the side at an unnatural angle and blinked vertical eyelids at me.

I raised my blasting rod, then hesitated. I couldn’t throw fire around in an enclosed space. The circle was a lot less powerful than a proper ward: it might protect the girl, but then again it might not. And there were other people in the building too.

Murphy came up under my elbow, said a few words I (probably) wouldn’t repeat in polite company, and raised her gun to fire right into the thing’s hideous face. The bullet bounced off its chitinous armor and rebounded wildly, striking my leather duster only to be turned aside by its protective spells. Spider Lady shrieked in surprise and rage and lunged towards us.

I raised my fist and triggered one of my force rings, aiming for a leg joint. The joint snapped, bent backward. Spider Lady’s leg collapsed beneath her, but she still had five more, and she kept coming in spite of it. I triggered the second ring, aiming at another leg on the same side. Spider Lady reeled, smashed into the table and shoved it across the floor, dragging Taylor along with it.

Spider Lady had been lamed, but by no means was she out of the fight yet. Her four remaining legs surged against the ground, trying to find the right balance of weight to allow her to lift herself again. She struck towards us with her claws but I hauled Murphy back, and she couldn’t reach us in the hall.

“Her belly!” Taylor cried from within the room. “Aim for her belly!”

Murphy glanced up at me and then stepped forward, watching the thing as she maneuvered to get a shot. Spider Lady watched us with her eight red eyes and hissed with her mouth full of fangs. Her four remaining legs scrambled and surged again, lifted the right side of her body from the ground to lunge at us.

It was the opening Murphy had been waiting for.

She pumped three rounds into the thing’s exposed belly, which in contrast to the pitted black chitin of its back was a smooth, blood-red surface. The bullets punched right through, and Spider Lady let out a shriek that was one part big cat and one part ripping sheet metal. She lashed out at Murphy with her claws, missed, and tried to drag herself forward to lunge again. Murphy circled her coolly and put three more bullets into Spider Lady’s abdomen, varying her placement in search of its vital organs.

Whatever she’d hit did the trick. The thing sagged forward, its red eyes closing, and then all at once it dissolved into a mass of clear, jelly-like substance: ectoplasm, the stuff that beings from the Nevernever use to create their physical mass. Without an entity to animate it the ectoplasm had reverted to its natural state, and would soon dissolve altogether.

I took stock: no injuries to me, Murphy, or the girl. A table knocked aside, a single metal chair warped out of shape by forces stronger than human muscle, a bullet lodged in the wall, and a mass of ectoplasm that would very shortly take care of itself. The gate the thing had come through had closed during the time I’d been occupied.

I glanced out into the hall. Other members of SI had come running, their guns drawn but pointed down so as not to hurt one of their own with a stray bullet. The nearest was Murphy’s partner, Stallings, who held his hand up to signal the rest to keep back. Their faces were drawn with apprehension but they had a determined set to their jaws, one and all. It’s a neat little taskforce Murphy’s got here. She should be proud.

I raised a hand to them. “Under control, gentlemen. Please return to your regularly scheduled caseload.” Stallings hesitated, then nodded to me and holstered his weapon. The rest of them followed suit. They knew me by now, enough to trust me when I said things were taken care of. They left it to me and Murphy.

I turned my attention back to the interrogation room. The pile of ectoplasm was already half-evaporated. Taylor’s protective circle had been broken in the scuffle, probably by a table leg, so the thing could have taken her out at any moment if it hadn’t been so focused on Murphy. I shuddered at the thought.

Taylor was staring at the pile of ectoplasm, unspeaking, unmoving, and probably in shock. Murphy returned her gun to her holster and stepped over the gelatinous mess to the girl’s side. She hauled Taylor to her feet, righted the undamaged chair, and unlocked the cuffs from the table. Taylor sat down heavily, her eyes unfocused.

“What was that thing?” Murphy asked me, not taking her eyes off the girl.

“Beats the heck out of me,” I replied. “Never seen anything like it.”

“It was aiming for her.”

“It was. Probably sent by the warlock who hired her, trying to tie up loose ends.”

The girl let out a soft sob that trailed off in a whine, listing in her seat. Her face was blotchy and red from crying. Murphy put a hand on her shoulder to keep her from falling from the chair. She glanced over at me. “Harry, why don’t you get her some water?” I frowned, and Murphy shrugged. “She’s not going anywhere. I’ll watch her.”

I looked at the girl, Taylor. She didn’t seem up to having a rational conversation, much less summoning the brains and magic to break out of a station full of armed police officers. I nodded to Murphy and left to get the girl a glass of water. I owed her at least that much, considering my role in terrorizing her today.

By the time I’d returned, carrying a cup of water and a small pile of napkins from the coffee station, Taylor seemed to have composed herself a bit. I set the cup and the napkins next to her. She waited until I’d moved a few steps back to reach for them.

“So,” Murphy murmured, “ready to talk now?”

Taylor shook her head, but it seemed more a gesture of disbelief than disagreement. “He betrayed me,” she whispered. Her young, pretty face twisted in anguish. “He _used_ me.”

“Who did?” Murphy asked gently.

Taylor lifted her head and blinked at Murphy, like she’d forgotten that there were other people in the room. Then she shook her head again as if to clear it and looked around.

Her eyes settled on something in the corner of the room. She raised a hand, got caught in the cuffs, then extended both cuffed hands, pointing with one. “That- you need to ground it out,” she said. “Otherwise he could send something else through.”

I looked in the direction she was pointing and saw the little jar from her backpack, the one Murphy had brought in to ask her about. It was broken open and oozing pinkish liquid onto the floor. I went over and gingerly picked up the broken pieces, trying not to let whatever had been inside touch my skin. “What is it?”

“A link,” Taylor answered. “A Way.”

I frowned at it, tilting the glass shard in my hand. I looked between the reddish ooze in my palm and the clear ooze on the floor. Things started to fall into place. “It’s ectoplasm. You kept it from evaporating so that it would make a link to the place it came from in the Nevernever- an artificial Way.” I turned to her. “This is how you’ve been opening gates everywhere so easily.”

“Ectoplasm and some other things,” Taylor confirmed. “My blood. Pieces of larger rocks from the physical plane that I brought to the other side. It’s a method I developed, so that I would always be able to find my way back, even if this world changed.”

I considered it for a moment. “And you say… he, can send things through with it?”

Taylor nodded. “Yes. Like Aranemon.” She jerked her chin at the mostly evaporated pile of ectoplasm that had been Spider Lady. “She was one of his favorite servants. He sent her through to…” She trailed off and swallowed. “He sent her through from where that connects on the other side. As long at the link exists he could send anything from there to here.”

Murphy stepped forward. “Or we could go through and bring the fight to him.”

I held up a hand. “Whoa, there, cowgirl.” Murphy glared at me, and I quickly explained. “We don’t know what kinds of things might be waiting for us over there. And I don’t want to go fight a wizard of unknown abilities on his home turf, without even the element of surprise.”

“If we destroy it,” Murphy argued, “we might lose our only chance of stopping him. He already has the knife. You said the Nevernever is a vast place, right? Potentially endless? If we destroy that, we’ll never find him.”

“You can’t do big workings like that on the other side; the flow of energy is too different. He’ll have to come back, and all our evidence suggests he’ll be coming back to Chicago. We’ll have another shot at him, and on our home field, too.”

“If you go through now, he’ll kill you,” Taylor broke in, her tone dull and matter-of-fact. Murphy and I stared at her. “You’ll be popping up right in the middle of his sanctum, and he’ll kill you.” She eyed us warily through her bangs. “If you want to save it and cross over later, you’ll need an airtight container to store it in. But he’ll know when Aranemon doesn’t come back that something went wrong, and every minute you keep that around is a minute he might send something worse through.” She squared her shoulders and added flippantly, “I, for one, don’t want to die for your stupidity.”

The devil-may-care attitude would have been more believable if she hadn’t been shaking.

I looked to Murphy, who scowled but gave me a grudging nod of assent. I went out into the hall, found the men’s room, and washed the stuff down a drain. Running water grounds out magical energies, and where that was going there would be plenty of it.

I returned to the room wiping my hands on my pants and dragging a chair from the hallway. I dropped it a few feet away from Taylor and gestured to Murphy to sit. She crossed her arms and leaned against the door. I sat instead.

“So,” Murphy continued, “this man who hired you and betrayed you. Who is he?”

Tears welled up in the girl’s eyes, although she tried to hide them. “He didn’t hire me,” she murmured. “I did it because he asked me to. I never dreamed…” she trailed off, her chin wobbling. “Human sacrifice?” she asked me in a small voice.

I nodded gravely. “I didn’t personally inspect most of them, but I have it from a source I trust that most of the things you’ve stolen are foci for dark magic. I did get a good look at the knife you stole last night, and I can tell you you won’t be doing any healing, creative magics with it. It was made for a bloody purpose, and short of some intense purification ritual that’s about all it can be used for.”

Taylor swallowed and bowed her head. “I thought it felt bad, but…” she hesitated, then whispered, “I trusted him.”

“And he betrayed you,” Murphy said. Her tone was blunt, matter-of-fact, but not cruel. “He tried to kill you. So give us a name and tell us where we can find him.”

Taylor took a shaky breath and let it out. “Camden,” she said. “That was the name I knew him by.”

“Nothing else?” Murphy asked. Taylor shook her head. “And do you know where he’s at, or what he’s planning to do?”

Another headshake from Taylor. “I know he was planning on using all the artifacts for a spell of some kind in Chicago, after he got the knife. I don’t know where in the city he’s working. He was going to contact me through the link, but now…” She shrugged helplessly. “And I don’t know what he’s planning. God, I swear, I never knew what he was doing with them.”

Murphy sighed. “Alright, why don’t you start from the beginning, then? Tell us how you fell in with this Camden.”

Taylor picked up the glass of water and drank from it. I guessed she was trying to get her thoughts together. She lowered the cup and then stared into it, like a fortune-teller trying to divine the future from tea leaves. I was pretty sure there weren’t any answers written on the bottom.

Finally she laid the cup down, and when she looked up she seemed a little steadier. “I was ten the first time I did it,” Taylor declared. “Magic, I mean. I was walking in the woods behind my foster mom’s house, then suddenly I looked up and the sky wasn’t blue anymore; it was orange.”

Murphy arched an eyebrow, probably wondering what kind of magic could change the color of the sky. It wasn’t any that I knew of. I frowned. Taylor ignored us and continued. “The trees looked funny, and even the dirt. I didn’t really understand it then,” she said, “but I’d crossed over. I guess I just wanted to be someplace else so bad, I found a way to do it.”

“The first time you did magic, and you opened a gate to the Nevernever?” I didn’t bother trying to keep the incredulity from my voice. Taylor shrugged and nodded.

“I found the wolves there,” she went on, a smile tugging at her lips. “They were nice to me. They called me a strange pup and gave me food.”

“The Fells, you mean?” I asked.

“Fells?” Taylor echoed, her forehead scrunched up.

“Fell Wolves.”

“Oh. I don’t know what other wizards call them. I suppose so.”

“They didn’t want anything in return for the food?”

“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “They’re not like other faeries. They treated me like one of their own.”

I snorted. “The first time you did magic, and you opened up a gate to the Nevernever and found something that _didn’t_ want to eat your face off?”

Taylor frowned. “It’s what happened,” she said, her tone defensive.

Murphy held up a hand to silence me. “Go on.”

Taylor nodded. “I kept going back. One time I tried taking one of my foster sisters there, but I couldn’t find it, which was weird because I could always find it. I figured, maybe I’m not allowed to take other people there.”

“One of my foster brothers got into some bad stuff.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Drugs, I think. Maybe a gang. He started robbing our neighbors to get money, and he’d bring me along to carry stuff because he knew I wouldn’t rat.”

I nodded as she spoke; that part of her account was much more believable. It wasn’t an unusual story, as they went. I’d known older kids at the group home who had gotten into all kinds of trouble with the law. Besides, the records we’d been able to find on Taylor did have her suspected in a home burglary. “He started teaching you?”

“Yeah. I was thirteen when we got caught. The house had a security system.” She shook her head ruefully. “I saw the cop car coming and I ran for the woods. I hid there and I saw them arrest Danny. Then they came looking for me. So I stayed hidden.”

“You hid,” I repeated. “In the Nevernever. With a group of wyldefae.”

“Yes,” Taylor said firmly.

I shook my head in amazement. “How long were you there?”

“A little more than a year,” Taylor said. “Then I got too curious, so I peeked out. My foster mom was gone. A new family lived there. I figured I was safe. I wandered around for a bit, picked a few pockets and got myself some food. I was sitting outside a fast food place, eating, when a man came up to me and said I’d taken his wallet, and he wanted it back. I tried to run, but he grabbed my hand and it was like lightning up my arm.” She pantomimed the sensation, dragging clawed fingers over her hand.

“He was a wizard,” I guessed. Practitioners of the art can feel when they make contact with others, usually as a sort of tingling sensation. The intensity of the feeling is proportional to the other person’s raw power.

Taylor nodded. “Camden. He could feel that I had the gift, so he offered to train me. I stayed with him for a few days. Then I wanted to bring him to meet the wolves, but…” She trailed off, frowning.

“But the spirit of the place had changed, and it didn’t link to the same piece of the Nevernever,” I said gently.

Taylor bowed her head in solemn agreement. “I couldn’t get back. I had nowhere else to go, so I stayed with Camden. He taught me all kinds of things. He didn’t have much of a job, so I stole a lot to help feed us. Little things at first, like cash or clothes; then more expensive stuff, electronics, to sell; then big things on commission. I used magic to hex down security systems. I was learning magic the whole time, and trying to find my way back to the wolves. After a few years of searching I managed to find a place with the same spirit, that linked to the same place. That was when I developed the artificial links, so I wouldn’t lose it again.”

“And the one we just destroyed,” Murphy said, “is that the one to the Fells’ home?”

“It was to a place that Camden found,” Taylor said. “Or made. I was never sure which. A big castle of white stone.”

I thought of the view from the other side of the gate that had opened in Edwards’ gallery. “That’s where you were coming from last night,” I reasoned.

Taylor nodded. “I always worked from there when I was doing a job for Camden. I left him about a year ago, started working on my own. Camden had some new apprentices by then anyways, other orphans and runaways like me. Then a couple months ago he contacted me and asked me to work on these artifact jobs.” She shrugged. “I never bothered asking too much about what he needed them for. I never for a minute thought he would do… what you say he’s doing.” She looked up at me apprehensively.

I rubbed my forehead, feeling a headache coming on. This story was starting to sound pretty familiar; so much so that I had to wonder if it hadn’t been concocted for my benefit.

“Let me guess,” I said dryly. “He never told you about the White Council and the Wardens, or if he did he told you they were all corrupt and would kill you on sight for operating outside their chain of command. He taught you all about _how_ to use your magic, but a lot less about when or why. He told you that the world was out to get you, so you should be just as cruel if you got the chance: right and wrong isn’t about the act itself, but about whether or not you get caught. He taught you that loyalty is the highest virtue, and he never said it but you knew that you owed him unwavering loyalty because of everything he’d done for you. Maybe he even beat you to drive home his lessons, but you figured he was trying to prepare you for a world that wouldn’t show you any mercy, and it only made you more loyal to him and more hostile to everything else.”

Taylor was staring at me with wide eyes, her mouth slightly open like she wanted to ask how I knew all of that. I turned away from her and scrubbed a hand back through my hair.

Murphy looked between the two of us, her lips pursed. I’d told her years ago about my past; about the black wizard Justin DuMorne who had plucked me out of the group home and trained me to be some sort of supervillain side-kick. Or maybe more of a brainwashed supersoldier. Murphy could see as well as I could that Taylor’s story had too many similarities to my own. If there’d ever been a tale constructed to play on my emotions and gain my sympathy, this was it.

But if I dismissed it out of hand and it wasn’t a story, I’d be hurting an already vulnerable girl even more. Not to mention I’d have no leads whatsoever on finding this Camden guy.

“Did he at least teach you about soulgaze?” I asked quietly.

Taylor’s eyes went wide as dinner plates and she turned her head sharply away. I could see her chin bob in a jerky nod. “Yes,” she whispered.

“He ‘gaze you?”

She shook her head. “I never did it.” She risked a glance back at me out of the corner of one eye, like she was afraid I’d come over and get in her face. “Camden said it hurts.”

“Not exactly. It can be jarring. You see the other person’s true nature, and sometimes that’s not very pleasant. But it doesn’t hurt, as such.”

“And the other person sees into your mind,” she said. “Sees all your secrets.”

“Not unless the secrets were so big that they’d become a part of who you are,” I corrected her. It seemed that this Camden, if her story was true, had done everything he could to poison her against anyone who might open her eyes beyond his skewed teachings. “It’s not a lie detector, and it doesn’t let the other person read your thoughts. It shows them your nature, plain and simple. What kind of person you are. And you see what kind of person they are.”

She was watching me now, from the corner of one almond-shaped eye and through a fringe of silky black bangs. After a moment she spoke. Her voice was sad and bitter. “I guess he lied about that, too.”

“I guess so.”

“You want to soulgaze me, now?” she asked. “Why?”

“Because I want to know if you’re telling me the truth.” She opened her mouth to object, and I held up a hand. “I said it’s not a lie detector, and I meant it. But the soul of a girl who believes she’s being harmlessly loyal to a man who raised and cared for her is going to be very different from the soul of a girl who steals artifacts of dark magic in full knowledge of what they’ll be used for and makes up sob stories as her cover.”

She gave me a sullen look. “And if I say no?”

“Then I have to assume that everything you’ve just told me is a lie. You go to central booking, and I have to find some other way to get to Camden before he starts killing people.” I stared her down, and she glanced away. “Taylor, if you want to stop him from hurting people with the things _you_ brought him, you’ll do this. You’ll help us bring him down.”

I could see her thinking furiously. I just hoped that whatever Camden had told her, he hadn’t poisoned her against others so much that she would let them die. Finally she nodded and turned to me. Her eyes were closed, but she faced me head on. She took a deep breath and then opened her eyes and met mine. We held each other’s eyes for a second, two, enough to get uncomfortable, then the ‘gaze began.

Taylor’s soul had been a place of innocence, one upon a time. A landscape like something out of a fairy tale, which roughly matched the way she’d described the part of the Nevernever when she’d met the Fell Wolves. It had been an environment of joy, of childish wonder, of happiness. Her life had never been easy; I could see scars on the trees from axes and fire. But the trees had survived and they had put out new growth around those injuries, healing and thriving. Loving and creative energies abounded.

Or so it had been, once. The patch of wilderness was under assault. Beyond a thin veil of trees I could see an expanse of bare, scorched earth. Sharpened stakes had been plunged into the ground at the edge of the trees as a defense. The small stream through the middle ran black with pollution. Taylor was at war with the world, poisoned by Camden’s lies. But she was also, at her core, a good person.

The soulgaze broke and I turned my head away. A few feet away from me, Taylor took a shaky breath and let it out. I did the same, letting my eyes fall closed. Soulgaze is a form of the Sight, a kind of magical sixth sense that shows things in their true nature. Everything you see in the Sight sticks in your mind, fresh as the day you saw it, never fading with time. I’d seen a lot of things I wished I could forget. Taylor’s soul was nowhere near to top of that list. All the same, soulgaze is always jarring.

“What did you find out?” Taylor asked me softly.

A lot of things. But I didn’t want to embarrass the girl by speaking intimate details of her soul out loud. Besides, there was only one thing that was really important. “I think we can trust you.”

I opened my eyes and saw Murphy watching me, her expression conflicted. She hadn’t spoken much after Taylor and I had started talking magic, and I wondered what she made of it. “Murph?”

“It’s a nice story,” Murphy said dispassionately. “And if you say so, Harry, I’m sure it’s true.” Her blue eyes flashed. “But I for one would like an explanation of why a woman was attacked by her pet monster the last time she was in town, and why she tried to kill Patrick Holland the other night, and,” she gave me a pointed look, “why one of our allies has gone mysteriously missing.”

I blinked at Murphy in surprise, then frowned. I had been so caught up in listening to Taylor’s story and wondering if it was fabricated that I had forgotten the things I most wanted her to answer for. If I hadn’t been so certain that she had a good soul, deep down, I would have been sure she was stringing me along. Hell, I didn’t really know she wasn’t. With the right motivation, she might lie, and it wouldn’t even have to conflict with what I’d seen of her.

“Who’s missing?” Taylor asked me, a little too eagerly. I got the impression she was trying to draw our attention away from the other two points.

“Thomas,” I said. “The White Court vampire who has with me the last time.”

“Is _that_ what he was?” Taylor asked, arching an eyebrow. “I wondered. I’ve never seen anything like him, before or since.”

Murphy snorted. I frowned. “He’s been missing since last night,” I said gravely. “Did you or your boss have anything to do with that? Tell me the truth.”

The coy attitude evaporated. Taylor sulked in her chair. “I didn’t do anything to him.” She scrapped a booted foot across the floor. “If Camden had something planned, he didn’t let me in on it.”

“And the woman? Natalie?” I asked, feeling a stirring of anger in my chest. “You said you’re just a thief, but your pet cut her up pretty good.”

Taylor crossed her arms over her stomach, suddenly looking a little green. “Nokah didn’t mean to,” she muttered. “She was wearing iron; it surprised him. It was an accident.” Taylor glared back at me. “You didn’t have to hurt him like that. Even with my shields, he barely made it. And that was the first and _last_ time I took a job that involved stealing something someone was wearing. I didn’t want to put anyone else at risk.”

“Your Fell was still going after the girl,” I argued, “and after we helped her escape it wouldn’t stop coming after _us_.”

“Because he thought you were a threat to me!” she cried. “And because she still had the necklace I got hired to take! Jesus, I don’t go around hurting people for fun!”

“And the fireball?” I pressed. “The one that could have killed that kid last night?” Taylor shook her head, opening her mouth to argue. I ran right over her. “What if I hadn’t been able to redirect my spell that quickly? He would have burned, and it would have been your magic that did it!”

Taylor slammed her left hand down on the desk, a gesture of pure frustration. Then she threw up her right hand towards me and snapped, “ _Ignis inlusio_!”

A ball of fire exploded from her hand and rushed towards me. I stumbled back, pushing Murphy behind me as I did. I threw up my left hand, drawing my shield together. It hadn’t been made to hold against heat, and the burns over my left hand were proof of that fatal design flaw. Still, it should hold off magic, including spellfire. I hoped.

The flames struck my shield- and passed right through it. I cried out and turned my head away as they engulfed my left hand. My nerves had been badly damaged in the last fire, but when the flames spread up my arm it would be agony all over again. I held my breath, bracing for the heat, for the pain- but it never came.

I cracked open one eye, daring to look down at my arm. Flames danced merrily over it, from my elbow down, but I felt no heat or pain from them. I blinked and reached out with my right hand to brush them experimentally. They spread over my fingers, a tingly but distinctly non-painful sensation.

Murphy shoved my back lightly, and I stepped forward to let her out from where she’d been jammed between my body and the wall. She stared at the flames along my arms as they evaporated. I looked up at Taylor. “An illusion?”

She nodded tiredly. “Your counterspell burned up my magic alright, but it was just an illusion. I didn’t need to hurt anyone; just to distract you for a second.”

I considered that. It fit with the rest of the picture I had of her: clever, resourceful, maybe selfish but not cruel. Still, it did twinge my pride a bit to know that I had done exactly what she’d wanted me to do. She had outwitted me, trusting that I would want to protect someone from her illusory spellfire badly enough to let her get away. I had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

Murphy regarded me with an expression that was one part rueful smile and one part mocking smirk. It looked distinctly out of place on her girlish features. “She got you, Harry.”

“Don’t we have other things to worry about?” I asked her. “Like stopping the bad guy?”

Murphy rolled her eyes to let me know she knew a misdirection when she saw it, but turned to Taylor all the same. “Right, then. Now that we’ve got all of that cleared up, let’s talk about what you know about Camden’s plans.”

Taylor sighed. “I told you,” she insisted, a note of exasperation in her voice, “I never knew what he had planned!”

“You must know something,” Murphy said patiently. “Think. Any little detail could help. Did he ever take you anywhere in Chicago?”

“We always operated out of his base in the Nevernever.”

“What exactly did you steal for him?” I asked her.

“Aside from the knife, there was a bowl,” Taylor began, ticking items off on her fingers.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Murphy, got some paper she can write on?” Murphy nodded and produced a pad of paper and a pen. I passed them both to Taylor. “Give me dates, cities, museums, and as much detail about the objects themselves as you can remember.”

Taylor started writing. It took a good ten minutes for her to finish, and she kept going back to scribble in more details. There were six items including the knife, which matched the number of cities where Ramirez had found crimes matching her MO. In addition to the knife, she had also taken three stone plaques carved with symbols, a bowl, and most miraculously a large stone table. All of them were Mayan in make. Between the knife, the bowl, and the table I had a pretty good picture of how the sacrifice would happen, but I still didn’t know what he planned to accomplish with it. 

“Had Camden acquired or started reading any new spell books around the time he first asked you to steal the artifacts?” I asked when Taylor had finished writing.

“None that I saw,” Taylor said. “But I hadn’t been around for a while at the time, and even after he asked me to do the jobs for him, I didn’t stick around much. He’d started picking up a lot of kids, and it was getting a little crowded for my tastes.”

“Kids?” I repeated. My brain started making connections and the bottom fell out of my stomach. “Since when?”

Taylor shrugged. “He got his second apprentice a little more than a year ago.” She frowned. “But about two months ago he suddenly started bringing home a lot more kids. Most of them were a lot younger than me. Ten, twelve. All of them were orphans or runaways with a gift for magic. He said they all needed his help.” Her expression moved from confusion to slowly-dawning horror. “It was right around the time I brought him the second artifact.”

“We know he’s planning black magic that involves human sacrifice,” Murphy murmured, “and he’s started collecting magically gifted children.” She didn’t need to finish the thought; we could all see where this was going.

Kids.

Hell’s freaking bells.

It’s bad enough when it’s women, but the thought of harm coming to a child makes me absolutely sick to my stomach, and nearly delirious with rage. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the kind of depraved soul it took to intentionally inflict pain on an innocent, helpless child. Adults should protect children. It's the most natural instinct we have, even more so than protecting ourselves. To reject that instinct and act against it is the greatest perversion imaginable, on par with turning the creative, life-giving forces of magic into a tool of death and destruction. Hell, there were warlocks who wouldn’t go that far.

“The kids,” Taylor whispered. She looked like she was going to be sick. “He’s going to kill the kids. With the weapons _I_ brought him.”

“We’ll find him.” Murphy declared, her blue eyes angry. “We’ll find him and stop him. If he thinks he can come into my city and murder people as he pleases, he is dead wrong.”

“How?” Taylor asked in a small voice. “I don’t know where he is or how to find him. I don’t even know his real name! I can’t help you. Even if you did find him, he’s really strong.” She looked up at me. “Maybe stronger than you.”

Murphy glared at Taylor, and the girl cowered. Murphy closed her eyes and took a breath to calm herself. “Damnit, she’s right,” she muttered to me. “It’s one thing to track someone down with prints and a mugshot; it’s totally different to find some mysterious John Doe. And you don’t have anything to use in a tracking spell. We’d need an army to comb the city for him. And we don’t have that kind of time!”

“I have an idea,” I announced suddenly. I answered the questioning looks from Murphy and Taylor with an almost manic grin. “Murph, bring a sketch artist up here and get a picture of Camden. I’ve got a call to make.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taylor's spell in this chapter:
> 
> Ignis inlusio- "ignis"="fire, and "inlusio"="illusion". Both of these are nouns, though, so it doesn't translate into a totally coherent phrase, since "illusionary fire" or "fire illusion" both require one word to be more of a descriptor. "Inlusio", or more commonly "illusio" is derived from the verb "illudo", meaning "to mock or ridicule", which in turn comes from "ludo", "to play, tease, or trick"


	12. Chapter 12

“Explain this to me, Harry,” Murphy said as we walked into an alley a few blocks from the stationhouse. “My provisions budget does not include pizza. And unless you can give me a damn good reason, your expenses don’t include it either.”

I glanced at Murphy over my shoulder. The scent of the pizza she carried was making my mouth water; I hadn’t had anything but stale stationhouse coffee since waking up. As much as I wanted to grab a slice from the box and chow down, I knew I had to resist. The pizza wasn’t for us.

“You know how your people put Taylor’s mugshot on the news and offered a reward to anyone with a good lead?” I asked. “Crowd-sourced investigating. I’m doing the same thing, just with a different crowd.”

Murphy looked down at the box in her arms. “And the pizza is what, a reward?”

“Something like that.”

I stopped near the center of the alley and checked both ways to make sure we couldn’t be easily seen by passers-by. As a general rule most people don’t notice the Little Folk’s presence unless they’re looking for them, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

“Okay,” I told Murphy. “Set the box down here.” She did it, still eyeing me with curiosity. “Got a knife handy?” I asked her. Murphy nodded and removed one from an ankle sheath. She passed it to me wordlessly. I pulled the leather glove from my left hand, revealing scarred and burned flesh that more closely resembled a horror movie prop than living tissue. I pressed the knife’s edge to the pad of my thumb until I saw blood well up around it; I couldn’t really feel it cutting into me. I passed the knife back to Murphy, then knelt, dabbed a bit of my blood on the bottom of the pizza, and used my right hand to draw a circle of chalk around the box. When it was done I stepped back and put my glove back on.

“What I’m going to do is a relatively minor summoning,” I told Murphy. “The entity I summon will come and eat the offering, and when it does the circle will close on it. Kind of like a fish biting down on a baited hook. Then I can ask it to do something for me in exchange for being released.”

Murphy took a judicious step back from the pizza. “What are you planning to summon?”

“Nothing particularly dangerous,” I assured her. “A dewdrop faerie who goes by Toot-toot.”

Murphy arched an eyebrow at the name even as her hand drifted to the gun she wore on her hip. “I thought faeries were bad news.”

“The high fae, the sidhe, sure. Little pixies like Toot not so much.”

Murphy frowned down at the open pizza box sitting in a ring of chalk on the alley floor. “Can I watch?”

“Nope,” I answered with a grin. “You’re just here to tote the pizza. Now go stand in that corner, turn around, stick your fingers in your ears, and hum something.”

Murphy glared daggers at me and crossed her arms. I wiped the smile from my face and gave her a serious answer.

“To summon Toot, I need to call out his true Name,” I explained. “Knowing something’s Name gives you power over it. Wizards can do a lot more with it than regular mortals can, but there’s a certain risk there, too. I’ve got a working relationship with Toot, but that won’t last long if I go blabbing his Name in front of everyone. You can turn back and watch once you see a ball of light flying by, but for the actual summoning I can’t have you listening in or reading my lips.”

Murphy’s expression softened somewhat, but she didn’t uncross her arms. “And the corner?”

“If he sees you, he’ll get suspicious and scamper. You need to be in the shadows, out of sight.”

She sighed and lifted her arms in a gesture of exasperation before letting them fall to her sides. “You could have just said that.”

“I could,” I agreed. “But it takes much longer than just telling you what I need you to do. And it’s not nearly as much fun to see your reaction.”

She scowled at me, and I grinned. I’ve learned to take my laughs where I can get them. “So now that you know why I’m asking, will you do it already?”

Murphy rolled her eyes, but she still went to the corner, turned around, and stuck her fingers in her ears.

“Don’t forget to hum!” I called. I might have been taking more enjoyment in the situation than was strictly professional.

“You can’t be serious!” Murphy called back, her tone irritated. The fact that she’d heard what I said at all only proved my demand was necessary, and I think she realized that as soon as she’d spoken.

“You heard me! Do it!”

Even facing away from me, I could tell from the movement of her head that Murphy was rolling her eyes. She started humming a few bars of what sounded suspiciously like Smoke on the Water, and I found a shadow of my own and went to work.

Toot’s Name was a rolling, melodic series of syllables, like a line of song written in some lyrical and alien tongue. I sent out just the tiniest bit of will with my voice, enough to draw him near but not enough to constitute a true compulsion. I didn’t want to do that, for two reasons. First, placing a compulsion on something with its Name skirts close to breaking the Laws of Magic, which forbid impeding another being’s free will. Technically that Law only applies to humans, but there were those on the Council that wouldn’t mind looking over that detail if it meant catching me in violation of it.

I had recited the name maybe five times when a ball of purple light roughly the size of a cantaloupe darted in from the mouth of the alley, making a beeline for the pizza without paying any mind to me or Murphy. The figure within landed on the pizza and inspected it. It didn’t take the bait. Hidden in my shadow, I held my breath and waited. The figure circled the pizza a few times, the stopped and looked out into the alley. It called out in a child-like voice, “Harry Dresden! Is that you?”

The second reason I didn’t use a full compulsion was because I’d worked with Toot-toot multiple times in the past. Given the mutually satisfying business relationship we had, it would be downright rude of me to go ordering him around. It was possible I’d overstepped just by using the circle. You don’t trick friends into helping you.

“It’s me, Toot,” I said, stepping from the shadows. Across the alley from me, Murphy emerged as well. She was trying to maintain a mask of professional detachment, but I could see the amazement in her eyes as she looked at Toot.

The little pixie wasn’t particularly impressive to someone from my end of the street, but I could see how someone who had never seen anything like him might be mesmerized. (Hell, maybe Karrin Murphy had been the type of little girl who nurtured a Peter Pan-esque belief in fairies. Now there was a funny thought.) Toot-toot stood maybe eight inches tall, his delicate features a minute replica of those of the high sidhe. His hands and fingers were built on a scale that invited the same sort of wonder one feels when touching an infant’s tiny hand (not that I’ve had occasion to touch many). His dandelion puff of lavender hair stuck out from a helmet made from the cap of a coke bottle. He carried some action figure’s plastic shield on his forearm, and strapped to his back was a box knife encased in orange plastic. 

“You could have just asked,” Toot said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You’re right,” I told him solemnly. It was better for the Little Folk’s pride to treat them with respect and gravity, even when their concerns seemed trivial. They were like children in that way. “Next time I will.” I extended a foot and deliberately smudged the line of chalk, breaking the circle, as a show of sincerity.

Murphy edged around the broken circle to stand by my side. Toot spotted her when she was half way there, and his wings buzzed in excitement. “Who’s this, Harry?”

“Toot, this is Lieutenant Murphy of the mortal police department.”

The pixie gasped and smacked himself in the forehead by way of salute. His body was in a rigid pose of military attention, his tiny chest puffed out. “Loo Tinder!”

Murphy glanced at me over Toot’s head, a tiny smile playing on her lips. Then she put on a serious expression and lifted a hand to her own forehead. “At ease, soldier.”

Toot dropped the pose, though he continued to watch Murphy with something like wonder on his face. She saw it and turned her head to me, shifting Toot’s attention. His wings whirled and he rose into the air until he was about level with my nose. “You have a mission for me, sir?”

“You and your kin. Can you relay it to them?”

“Of course!” He flitted around for a moment, then looked down at the pizza sadly. “We will have to divide the payment.”

“Take this one for yourself,” I told him. “I’ll send another for everyone when the job is done.”

Toot’s wings buzzed with excitement. “Thank you, my Lord!” He soared up over my head and then dive-bombed the pizza, devouring it in a cloud of cheese and purple sparks. By all rights he shouldn’t have been able to pack away more than one slice, but little things like laws of physics don’t seem to concern him much. It’s always been a mystery to me where the little faeries manage to put it all.

“My lord?” Murphy mouthed to me. I shrugged. That was a new one for me, too.

Toot let out a high-pitched little belch and flopped onto his back on the empty cardboard, his belly rounded to nowhere near the degree it ought to have been. “What orders, my Lord?” he asked me from the ground.

I took a piece of paper from one of the inner pockets of my duster. It was a copy of the sketch an artist had made from Taylor’s description of Camden (Murphy had insisted on keeping the original as evidence). He was a middle-aged man, his dark hair streaked with grey. His face bore lines of laughter about the mouth, and lines of worry around the eyes. He had a sort of classic handsomeness, though it was somewhat marred by a thin scar on one cheek and a broken nose that had healed slightly crooked.

I knelt and held the sketch out over Toot where he lay on the box. “I’m looking for this man. I haven’t got a better picture of him. Can you find him from this?”

“Can a leprechaun glamour leaves into gold?” Toot asked.

“I’m guessing that’s a yes?”

“Undoubtedly, my Lord!”

“Good.” I nodded. “This man is in the Nevernever now, but sometime in the next day or so he’ll be coming out into Chicago. I need the Wee Folk to patrol Chicago and maybe the near reaches of the Nevernever, and lead me to him when you find him. You cannot let yourselves be seen.”

Toot considered it, rubbing a hand over his chin even while his back remained flat against the ground. “It will take a long time,” he said, “if we patrol the city for two whole days. Long jobs are boring, Harry.”

“So work in shifts,” I told him. “Stick around a church with a clock tower for the day, and send a different group of people out looking every time the church bells ring and the long hand of the clock is pointed up. If you do that, I’ll pay a slice of pizza for every group that goes out. Is that fair?”

Toot climbed to his feet. “That’s a lot of pizza, Harry,” he said in amazement.

“Four extra-large pizzas if the mission lasts two days,” I agreed. “Although if you don’t search thoroughly, or put off telling me after you find him to get more payment, I will be very angry. I may decide not to pay you at all.”

A look of horror crossed Toot’s tiny face, and his wings buzzed in alarm. “Never, my Lord! We would never milk you so egregiously!”

I kept the smile from my face. “See that you don’t. Come by my apartment when you find him. Be careful of the wards.”

Toot gave me an insulted look. “The wards will not hinder us, my Lord. Who do you think watches over the brownies while they do their work?”

I blinked. I didn’t know Toot and his folk could bypass my wards. That was a little unsettling.

I pushed that tidbit from my mind and folded the paper up and handed it to him. “Show this to your people. Make sure they know his face and go out every hour. As soon as he comes over from the other side, I want to know where. Lives are at stake, Toot.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Toot piped, smacking himself in the forehead again. I saluted in return, my expression grave, and at my side Murphy did the same. Then Toot-toot streaked off into the sky in a blur of violet light.

Murphy watched the direction Toot had vanished in until the glowing trail of faerie light had disappeared. “Wow,” she whispered. I grunted. She looked up at me for a moment, her expression thoughtful. The she asked, “Brownies?”

“Brownies?” I echoed, feigning innocence. “What brownies?” 

I knew what brownies, of course. I had a troupe of the little faeries on loan from the youngest of the Summer Queens, as thanks for saving her life years before. They cleaned up around my apartment and kept the kitchen stocked, though they never bothered to check the shopping lists I wrote out. They seemed to like pizza every bit as much as Toot, so I tried to leave a slice or two lying around on the counter as payment. They only stopped by when the apartment was empty, so I had never actually seen them at work. Neither had Thomas, for that matter. He had no idea how the apartment stayed so clean. Faerie housekeepers don’t like recommendations; if I told anyone about them, they would stop coming.

Murphy gave me an odd look, obviously aware that I was hiding something. Then shook her head. “Never mind that. Do you really think he can find Camden? One person in the entire city?”

I shrugged. “I think he can if he remembers the mission,” I told her. “The amount of ground to cover isn’t the issue here. The Wee Folk have very short memories. He might send out patrols two or three times and then forget why he was doing it in the first place.”

Murphy frowned. “So it’s long odds?”

“About as long as putting a picture on the news and hoping one of the calls to Crime Stoppers is actually worth listening to.” I shrugged. “All we can do now is wait and pray.”

Murphy pursed her lips and looked down at the empty pizza box. After a moment she said, “I suppose my budget can include pizza, but we’d better not invoice it that way.”

I thought of some CPD clerk reading an invoice for four large pies from Pizza ‘Spress, and laughed out loud. “Call it an incentive for a confidential informant. Much more official-sounding.”

Murphy shook her head. “You’ll call me when you hear from him?”

“Of course. But you’d better be ready to jump in the Beetle when I come by your place at three in the morning. We can’t afford to wait on this.”

“No,” Murphy agreed. “Not with what’s at stake.”

We stood there for a moment in silence, both of us thinking about the lives riding on our actions. There were a lot of things that could go wrong. Camden may choose a different city to work in now that he knew his apprentice was burned, or hold off the sacrifice for more than two days so that pursuit could die down. Toot and his people might not be able to find him, or given their tenuous grasp on geography, might not be able to lead me back. I might not be able to get past any wards he had up. I might not be able to stop him. I might be too late to try.

But the fact that the deck was stacked against me didn’t mean that I could give up on those kids. It meant I had to do everything I could to tip the odds in my favor.

We walked back to the stationhouse in silence. The old desk sergeant seated near the door waved us through without asking for identification. When we got back to SI’s bullpen, one of the officers handed Murphy a pile of papers fresh from the printer. She had asked him to research the artifacts Taylor had stolen, to see if there was any information about them online. I had to admit, the internet was a pretty impressive font of knowledge. If only I could get within five feet of a computer without blowing it up.

I looked over Murphy’s shoulder while she flipped through the papers. Most of it was articles on the various exhibits the artifacts had been taken from, discussing their archeological significance. At the end were six sheets of paper each bearing two or three shots of an artifact from different angles. Some of them had been blown up so that they were heavily pixelated. There wasn’t much to be had in the way of details.

“What do you make of it, Harry?” Murphy asked me

I made a noncommittal noise. I had no idea what to make of it, but I knew someone who might. Loathe as I was to take advice from her, the fallen angel Lasciel had been around for millennia and had extensive knowledge of magic, particularly the darker kinds. I turned my focus inward and carefully loosened the bonds on her thought-prison. “Lash,” I called, “what do we make of it?”

“A dark and bloody rite, my host,” Lasciel’s voice came to me, “requiring the lifeblood of those who wield the art.”

“Practitioners, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“You know what it does?”

Lasciel’s shadow appeared beside me suddenly, thankfully in her usual feminine form instead of as the double of Thomas. She reached a hand over Murphy’s shoulder and pointed at some of the pictures. I knew she wasn’t really there, but I still had to fight the urge to slap her hand away from Murphy. “These plaques bear instructions for the rite, my host, and I am somewhat familiar with its history. It was devised by the sorcerers among the Lords of Outer Night as a way of diminishing the power of the mortals and increasing their own.”

“Lords of Outer Night?” I echoed.

Lasciel looked up at me through her eyelashes. “The high lords of the Red Court, my host. Many of them can employ the art as well.”

I shuddered at the thought. I’d had my hands full just dealing with a minor noble of the Red Court, and though I’d gone toe to toe with its warlord it had been under circumstances that leveled the playing field by taking magic and main strength out of the equation. Even then, I hadn’t actually been able to kill him. I definitely wouldn’t want to contend with these Lords of Outer Night.

“What does it do?” I asked Laciel.

“The sorcerer spills the lifeblood of mortal practitioners upon the table using the knife, and drains it into the bowl. From there he invokes the power laid within the artifacts by earlier Lords to transfer the abilities of the slain to himself. He consumes the blood of the fallen, and with it their power in the art.”

“Like the faeries’ stone table,” I reasoned. The stone table was the source of the faerie courts’ power, and the thing the two courts most struggled over. Dominion over it passed from Winter to Summer and back according to the seasons. When someone was killed upon the table, their power passed to whichever court held it. I had seen the table up close and personal in the middle of a raging battle between the courts, when the Summer Lady tried to murder the holder of the Mantle of the Summer Knight on the table while Winter held it, in order to force a power imbalance that would lead to a war with cataclysmic consequences. 

“The table from which Winter and Summer draw power is far older and more powerful,” Lasciel said, “but this version was indeed modeled after it.”

So that was why Camden had been collecting orphans and runaways with the gift. No one would miss them, unlike the adult minor talent who often had connections both within the community and outside of it. Some of the kids might even have real power, the kind that would put them on the White Council someday, but unlike grown wizards they wouldn’t be able to use it to defend themselves yet. Camden could steal and slaughter them with relative ease, and no one would come looking for them.

A shudder ran through me. If Ramirez hadn’t found the pattern in Taylor’s thefts, no one would have figured out Camden’s plan, and he would have been free to kill and amass power as he pleased.

“That’s enough,” I told Lasciel. She glanced up at me, then lowered her eyes demurely. The illusion of her disappeared. I looked down at the print-outs in Murphy’s hands, feeling sick to my stomach. Then I took a moment to wall off my thoughts and block Lasciel from coming forth again.

“Harry?” Murphy asked. She was looking up at me with an expression of mild concern. I wondered if it had been the first time she’d called to me.

“It’s a rite,” I told her, “to transfer the power of other wizards to him.”

“He’ll murder the children and absorb their power,” Murphy said, her voice soft and horrified. “We’ve got to stop him, Harry.”

“I know,” I assured her. “We will.”

Her eyes searched my face for a moment, and for the first time since the case had begun, Murphy seemed uncertain. She swallowed and turned her head away from me. “You’re right. Of course we will.” She squared her shoulders. “I’ll rally the troops, and we’ll hit him in force tomorrow.”

I caught her wrist lightly as she turned to go. “You can’t bring Stallings and the rest of SI in on this one, Murph.” She set her jaw and glared at me. I stared right back. “We go in sirens blaring and tip him off, people will die; just like if Johnson and his SWAT team did it. Even if we go in quiet, I don’t want more people in the way when the spells start flying. It’s just more to worry about.”

“Johnson didn’t know what he was getting into,” Murphy argued. “SI has taken down sorcerers before. You wizards act like the rest of us are totally powerless. One gun may not do much, but it we get the whole department out there it’ll add up.”

“Or it’ll just piss him off more,” I countered. “You saw how useless guns were against Taylor’s shields. Camden is the one who trained her. You have to expect that his will be even more powerful.”

Murphy scowled at the ground. I sighed. “Murph, I know you and your boys can handle a lot. I’ve worked with you to take down sorcerers before, so don’t act like I think you’re all useless. I’m saying this for a reason. Taylor’s built some pretty damn impressive shields, shields _I_ couldn’t take apart, and if Camden is anything like her I don’t know how effective a whole army of gunmen would be. I don’t want us to be pumping bullets into a ward or shield while he slaughters children inside.”

Murphy was silent for a moment, her jaw clenching and unclenching. I wasn’t sure if she was going to keep arguing. I knew she would see the logic in what I was saying, but I also knew she could be pretty stubborn on this topic. “I won’t do anything that might endanger those kids,” she said at last. It was a vague answer. Vague enough that she might have been saying she’d bring SI in with or without my cooperation. I chose not to interpret it that way.

“They’ll be safer if we can get them out before he even notices we’re there,” I told her.

Murphy shook her head, clearly unhappy with the answer. Murphy believes in the law. She may not like the bureaucracy of it, but she thinks it’s worth it to work within the system. She also knows that there are times when it’s not possible to do that and save lives.

“I’m going to get Miss Lin processed,” Murphy announced, changing the subject. We’d left Taylor in the interrogation room, and set one of Murphy’s team to watch her with orders to shoot her if she moved. I trusted that she’d told us the truth, but I didn’t trust her not to rabbit if she thought she could get away.

“What will you do with her?” I asked carefully.

Murphy glared at me. “Send her to central booking.”

“I don’t think it’s the best idea, Murph. Even without her artificial link, she could open a gate wherever she’s at and slip through. Or she could do something worse, like summoning a Fell with its Name, or blast out a prison wall and set a bunch of felons on the loose along with her.”

“So what do you suggest?” Murphy asked me warily. She was still unhappy to not be bringing SI to the party with Camden; she didn’t want to hear me objecting to processing Taylor according to standard protocol.

But standard protocol didn’t and couldn’t apply when you were arresting people or things that weren’t normal. The mortal authorities couldn’t keep Taylor bound; of that I was certain. I might have been able to do something to make it easier on them, but I wasn’t sure it was really a good idea to leave her with her hands tied. If Camden happened to have some of her hair or blood, or a way to open a gate near her, or some other method of harming her, I didn’t want her to be helpless against it, especially if the people around her had no idea how to help her. There was only one way to both protect the girl and prevent her from escaping.

“Release her into my custody for the night,” I told Murphy. “I’ll lock her up behind my wards. She won’t be able to get out, and Camden won’t be able to reach her to hurt her.”

I could see the gears turning in Murphy’s head as she went through the same logic I had. I knew it galled her to release a criminal, but I hoped she could see why it was necessary. Besides, it wasn’t like she’d be letting the girl go free.

At last Murphy spoke, grudingly. “My superiors won’t like it.”

“Technically, we never even arrested Taylor Lin,” I pointed out. “A dangerous fugitive escaped Johnson’s SWAT team, and we arrested a Jane Doe with no connection to the museum case for public intoxication.”

Murphy grimaced. We had fudged the paperwork on Taylor’s arrest a bit, which was nothing new for SI. After all, you can’t file reports with phrases like “evil sorcerer”, “vampire scourge”, or “faerie menace” and expect to stay on the force long enough to collect a pension. Turning up with a fugitive minutes after Special Crimes was supposed to have made a raid on their hide-out would have looked awfully suspicious. At best people would think Murphy had sabotaged Johnson’s raid, and at worst they might think she’d somehow aided a wanted criminal. She had lied on the paperwork in order to give us deniability. She hadn’t done it in order to skirt the law even more by using the petty crime on the arrest record as an excuse to release a fugitive.

Finally, though Murphy nodded her assent. “You’ll bring her back as soon as this is over,” she demanded.

“I will,” I assured her. “Believe me, I want her to answer for the crimes she’s committed just as much as you do. But being murdered by a dark wizard with a strand of her hair is not a fair punishment for what she’s done.”

“I’ll get the paperwork,” Murphy said sullenly. “You go relieve O’Toole. She’ll be your responsibility for the rest of the night.”

I went back to the interrogation room where we’d left Taylor. O’Toole was leaning against the wall across from the room, watching what was happening inside through a little window on the door. He was one of the younger members of SI, and built solid like a pit bull. His uncle, Mickie Malone, had served with SI for years, and faced down some truly horrific things during that time. Malone had been able to retire with his life, but he’d also done it with plenty of scars, both physical and spiritual.

“Dresden,” O’Toole called to me as I approached. I nodded to him in greeting. “Your girl has been a model prisoner. I don’t think she’s moved an inch since you left.”

“Good to hear,” I said. “Listen, it’s too dangerous to drop her at central booking for the night, so I’m going to take her to my place where I can keep an eye on her. Murphy’s drawing up the paperwork right now.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “You want to go in and tell her that?”

“Sure. Don’t worry about her, I’ll take it from here.” O’Toole shrugged. I reached for the handle of the door, but as I did I felt the presence of a spell. It wasn’t a ward or a shield, and definitely not any kind of battle magic. It felt more delicate, like a veil. Alarmed, I reached into my duster for my blasting rod and threw the door open. Behind me, O’Toole noticed my unease and came running back, drawing his weapon from his belt.

The scene within the room was very different from what had been visible through the window. Instead of sitting quietly in her chair with her head bowed, Taylor was standing in front of a (relatively) small Fell, and had apparently been talking to it. The moment I came in she whirled around, spreading her arms out and placing herself between me and the Fell like she was defending it. Given what I knew of her, she probably was. The Fell remained behind her, and watched me with what seemed like calculating interest.

O’Toole started to bring his gun up, but I put a hand on his arm. “Taylor,” I said evenly. “What’s going on here?”

“I just wanted to tell them what happened,” she said. Her tone was strained, wary and defensive. She probably didn’t want to see this Fell hurt like the last two I’d come across.  “I wanted to make sure that they knew the truth about Camden. He still has links to their part of the Nevernever. He might have asked them to work for him like they did me.” She saw that I wasn’t moving to attack her or her pet out of hand, and she lowered her arms. Her eyes were fierce and proud. “Now that they know the truth, they want to help. They don’t want to see children get hurt.”

I looked over her shoulder at the beast, which looked right back at me without fear. Faeries don’t have souls like humans do, so there was no chance of a soulgaze. “Is that the truth?” I asked it.

The Fell tilted its head to one side, its amber eyes narrowing. It opened its jaws and worked them soundlessly for a moment. Then a scratchy, oddly pitched noise came from its mouth, and it took me a moment to recognize the words. “It is truth, wizard.”

I nodded. Faeries can manipulate mortals by using half-truths, but they can’t actually speak a lie. I replaced my blasting rod inside my duster. At my side, O’Toole holstered his weapon. He looked at me, his expression uncertain. I gave him my best reassuring smile and told him I had things covered. He left, looking back over his shoulder at the Fell as he went.

I turned my attention back to Taylor and the Fell. Taylor had said the Fells wanted to help. Given what I’d seen of them, I knew they could be formidable enemies. It would certainly be nice to have them on my team instead of the opponent’s.

“If we find where Camden is holed up, we’ll have to make a raid on him. It could get dicey. Will they help us in a battle?”

Taylor looked up at the Fell, letting it answer for itself. It tilted its head to the other side and repeated the same motion to get its voice working. “My kind abhors the murder of cubs, wizard, whatever they may be. We are loathe to think that our actions may have endangered them. If we have the opportunity to protect them and take revenge on he who twisted our intentions thus, we will gladly fight.”

“Then prepare your warriors,” I told it, “as many as you can spare. Taylor will open a gate for you when we’re ready for them.”

The creature looked to Taylor. She squared her shoulders and nodded. “I’ll call on you when the time comes. Until then, do what you can to prepare.”

I heard footsteps in the hall and turned to see Murphy drawing near, a clipboard bearing Taylor’s release forms in one hand. “Murph,” I began, trying to warn her, but before I had the chance to explain she had cleared the door and seen the Fell inside. The clipboard fell from her hand and Murphy had her gun out and up before it clattered to the floor. She was aiming at Taylor. The Fell evidently recognized the gun as a threat, because it let out a low growl and tried to move around the girl to get at Murphy. Taylor held her ground in front of it, whether to protect it or Murphy, I didn’t know.

“Easy, easy!” I cried, trying to position myself between Taylor and the gun without actually getting in front of the gun. I wasn’t used to being the voice of reason, and I don’t think I played the role very convincingly. “Everyone settle down.” I held a hand out to Murphy, palm out in an appeasing gesture. “It’s alright, Murph. Everything’s fine.”

“There’s a werewolf in my squad room,” Murphy said. Her voice was ostensibly steady, but I could hear the anger and fear in the strain of her words. “How the hell is that fine?”

I winced. I should have known Murphy would react badly to seeing the Fell here. A rampaging wolf monster called a loup-garou had once torn its way out of SI’s holding cells, tearing apart several good officers in the process. Among the casualties had been Murphy’s former partner, Carmichael, who had sacrificed himself to protect her. Mickie Malone had been hamstrung.

“Well, technically it’s not a werewolf,” I told her. Murphy glared at me, not lowering her weapon. “It’s not here to hurt anyone, or even to help Taylor escape. It’s peaceful.”

“Peaceful?” Murphy repeated incredulously. I nodded. She stared the Fell down for what felt like several minutes, then finally replaced the safety on her gun and eased out of her shooting stance. She didn’t put the gun away. “Why is it here?”

“Taylor summoned it so that she could tell her allies how Camden betrayed them,” I explained. “The Fells want revenge, and they want to keep the kids safe. They’ll fight with us when the time comes.”

“Can we trust them?” she asked me.

“Go ahead and ask it,” I suggested. “Faeries can’t tell a lie.”

Murphy took a step forward, looking over Taylor’s shoulder at the Fell. Taylor had relaxed a bit, and the Fell had edged back behind her now that the threat to the girl had passed. “You will fight Camden and anything he summons?” Murphy asked.

“I and my kin will do so,” the Fell declared.

“And you will not harm me or my allies?”

“We have no quarrel with you.”

Murphy frowned. “That’s not an answer.”

“No harm will come to your people from my kin.”

“And you won’t harm the children?”

The Fell let out a thunderous snarl at the accusation. Murphy stood her ground, but I noticed her thumb moved to rest on the safety of her gun. Her other hand was clenched in a tight fist that didn’t quite hide the trembling. “We will allow no harm to come to the human cubs,” the Fell growled. “Any who wish harm on them shall contend with us.”

Murphy let out a shaky breath and nodded. She stepped back towards me, and I put an arm around her shoulders to steady her. She shrugged it off. “It’s not staying here, is it?” she asked softly.

“No,” I said, my eyes on Taylor. “It’s going back to the Nevernever to tell the other Fells what happened.”

Taylor stepped away from the Fell and turned her back on us. She held her hands out towards the creature, and although I could not hear the exact words I could make out the cadence of a spell to send something back after summoning it.

The Fell disappeared in a blur of air. Faeries are closer to mortal than beings from other parts of the Nevernever, and they have their own physical forms. If you kill one, it doesn’t leave behind a pile of ectoplasm; it leaves a body.

Taylor lowered her arms and turned back to us, her expression guarded. “What happens to me now?”

“Now,” I told her, “you come home with me. Because we can’t have you doing things like that,” I nodded to the space the Fell had occupied moments before, “in jail.”

Taylor let out a tired little laugh. “No,” she said, “I guess not.”

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

Murphy gave Taylor and me a ride back to my place. She walked the girl to my door at gunpoint, which I thought was a bit excessive. I could just imagine my little old landlady coming outside and seeing that. I wouldn’t like to field the questions she’d ask.

Taylor watched me with an unnerving intensity as I disabled my wards and shoved the door open. Maybe it was paranoia talking, but I was pretty sure she was inspecting the wards in her Sight, looking for flaws in my work. Given that she made damn near flawless shields herself, and had managed to use my own ward against me, I didn’t like the idea of her messing with the ones around my home.

The interior of my apartment was exactly how I’d left it, which was to say absent a certain White Court vampire. The background anxiety I’d felt all day shoved itself forward in my chest, so thick it threatened to suffocate me, and I stomped it back down again. I could worry about Thomas after I’d made sure Taylor wouldn’t be testing out any weak points in my wards.

“Hold her,” I told Murphy. “I’ll be right back.” I lit the candles around the room and the log in the hearth with a word, then retreated into my bedroom and down into my lab. After a minute or two of searching I found what I was looking for, something I’d salvaged from a fight last Halloween.

I returned from the sub-basement to find both women seated in my living room. Murphy leaned back in my easy chair, her relaxed posture offset by the tension in her body. Taylor was perched on the edge of the couch. She was rubbernecking all over the place, taking in the bookshelves and mismatched furniture and heavily textured rugs. She didn’t seem to be paying any mind to Murphy, who was casually holding a gun on her.

“Cuffs?” I asked Murphy. Without taking her eyes off Taylor, Murphy reached for her belt and found the key. She tossed it to me underhand, and I snatched it out of the air. When I went to Taylor’s side the girl held her arms out to me without looking at my face. I unlocked the cuffs.

Taylor looked down at the red marks on her wrists where the metal had pressed into her skin. She hadn’t struggled, so the skin wasn’t raw, but she rubbed the marks anyways. Her shoulders were hunched, as though she was trying to curl in on herself. She looked sad, scared, lost, and so very young. Like the kind of person I should be protecting, not imprisoning. I felt guilty for what I was about to do.

That didn’t stop me from doing it.

I grabbed her right hand and pulled it towards me, then slapped another cuff onto her wrist. Taylor made an indignant noise and yanked her arm back. She glowered at me, a look that could peel paint, figuratively. I’ve been on the receiving end of similar looks from beings that could probably have literally peeled paint with their gaze if they wanted to. Taylor’s glare didn’t frighten me. The fire in her eye burned out, replaced by a look of sullen resignation. Taylor averted her eyes and lifted her hand to inspect the band of metal around her wrist.

It was chunky and rough, more a manacle than a handcuff. It was all black, and its metal was icy to the touch even though it had been sitting out at room temperature. It had spines over it on the inside and outside, so I had fastened it only loosely around her wrist. At the end of the manacle a few links of chain dangled; it couldn’t be secured to anything.

Taylor ran her free hand over the loose end of the chain and cast a wary glance in my direction. “What is this supposed to do?”

“You’ll see.” I handed Murphy back her cuffs and keys.

Taylor stared at the metal band, obviously expecting it to do something. Then she looked up at me and cocked an eyebrow.

“Try to gather your power,” I told her.

A look of confusion crossed the girl’s face, followed by one of mild concentration. The metal on her wrist writhed, the spines digging into her flesh, and Taylor gasped in pain and alarm. She gripped her arm, staring down at the manacle in horror, then looked up at me. Her eyes were glassy with fear and disbelief.

“Thorn manacles,” I explained. “They prevent practitioners from gathering their will to use magic. A bad guy used that one on me. I killed him.” Technically true, although I’d had more than a little help. But she didn’t know that.

Taylor swallowed and nodded. She looked back down at her hand, her expression still plainly terrified. I knew how she felt. I’d lived most of my life knowing my power was right there if I reached for it; to be cut off from it was horrifying in and of itself.

“If you relax, the pain will ease up,” I told the girl gently. “This is a necessary precaution to prevent your escape, but it’s only for tonight. I’m giving this,” I held up a black metal key done in the same style as the manacle, “to Murphy, and when we meet up tomorrow to go after Camden, she’ll free you. In the meantime, I won’t let anything get near you while you can’t defend yourself.”

Taylor nodded, though she didn’t look particularly comforted. Murphy was watching the girl with an odd look on her face. I could guess what she was thinking: it was necessary to prevent Taylor from using magic to escape, but the means needed to accomplish that seemed horribly inhumane. I’d had the same thought more than once, but I’d justified it to myself with the knowledge that the manacle wouldn’t hurt her if she didn’t use magic. If she was really ready to cooperate with us, she had no reason to need her magic, and the manacle would have no reason to hurt her.

Murphy took the key from me and left, after making me swear once more that I would call her the moment Toot got back to me. I was left alone with the girl, and my cat and dog. Taylor sat with her arms resting on her knees and her head down. She didn’t look at me or speak. I suppose I wouldn’t have either, in her position.

I went to the phone and checked the voicemail. The message I had left for Thomas was still there, along with a message from my mechanic, Mike, about the cost of the most recent repairs to the Blue Beetle. There was nothing from Thomas. I jotted down a note to myself to call Mike, then deleted both messages and dialed Thomas’s number again. The steamer trunk by the couch rang, and Taylor glanced at it warily. I hung up before I could get his voicemail.

It had been almost an entire day since I’d seen or heard from my brother. I didn’t like that, especially considering there was a dark wizard in town. At the same time, it made no sense for Camden to have come after Thomas. As far as he knew, we had no way of tracking him down, so there was no need to make a preemptive strike. What was more, Taylor was the only one who had actually dealt with us face to face. She hadn’t even known what Thomas was, so she could hardly have given Camden description enough to act on.

The lumpy fur rug on my kitchen floor made a soft snuffling noise and lifted its shaggy head, then rose up on its paws and resolved itself into my big dog. Mouse padded over to me and shoved his head under my arm. I stroked his ears and tried not to think about the fact that my brother was missing and I didn’t even have any reasonable suspects. I’ve read that petting animals is supposed to help you calm down. I never put much faith in that, but I had to admit that my heartrate had gone down a bit by the time Mouse slipped out from under my arm and shuffled into the living room.

I watched from the kitchen while Mouse snuffled at Taylor’s shoes. The dog had shown a remarkable ability to detect evil creatures in the past. I didn’t know if he could sense intentions or simply tell when things that weren’t human were around, but I wanted to see how he reacted to Taylor.

Mouse sneezed on her shoes. Then he sat down in front of her and raised a massive paw as if to shake, offering her a big doggie smile. Some of the tension left my shoulders: she’d passed his test. Taylor lifted a hand and patted Mouse’s head gingerly, a little smile playing on her lips.

Mouse’s head whipped towards the door a second before something rattled in the lock. Taylor went rigid on the couch, her eyes darting first to the door, then to me, then the door again. I held my breath as I watched the doorknob jiggle, my mind running through a list of security spells that hadn’t responded to the approaching presence. Then the heavy and warped security door flew open in a single sweep, and Thomas stood framed in the doorway, tucking his keys into his pocket as casually as you please.

The lump of anxiety that had been festering in my chest all day suddenly popped like a soap bubble, leaving a giddy relief in its wake. I probably should have played it cool, maybe cracked a joke about missing curfew, and definitely not let on how worried I’d been.

But I didn’t. The thought didn’t even have time to cross my mind before my feet were moving, carrying me out of the kitchen and straight to Thomas’s side at a sprinting pace. I seized his arms in my hands, giving him a shake to emphasize my words. “There you are! Do you know how worried I’ve been? Where were you?”

Thomas blinked at me without answer, evidently stunned by my greeting. That was when my brain got over his presence long enough to register his state.

Thomas looked like he’d just walked off the set of a porno film (and I should know- I’ve been to one). His hair was in disarray; hickies and teeth marks, fading as I watched, were scattered liberally over what I could see of his neck and shoulders. The seam of one sleeve was torn, like someone had been overenthusiastic about trying to pull his shirt off. He stank of sex, a potent combination of sweat and other bodily fluids that somehow bypassed my conscious brain and sent my mating instincts straight into overdrive. His arms, where my hands gripped them, were still sticky with sweat. Frankly put, he looked like he had spent the entire time between now and when I’d last seen him locked in a hotel room having marathon sex, and hadn’t bothered to shower afterwards. And all things considered, that was a distinctly probable scenario.

Thomas didn’t acknowledge my question. Instead he said, “I thought you’d sleep longer.” I felt his shoulders roll in a shrug beneath my hands. There was an apology in there somewhere, I was pretty sure.

“Murphy called.” I released Thomas’s arms and took a step back, letting him come all the way into the apartment and close the door behind him. “Mouse wasn’t feeling the whole ‘let the answering machine get it’ plan. He woke me up.” I turned to glare at the dog where he still sat at Taylor’s feet. Mouse wagged his tail. Thomas followed my gaze, and I felt him tense at my side when he registered the presence of another person.

Taylor was watching us warily, her fingers dug into Mouse’s fur. She was leaning off the couch against his back, as though she intended to use the dog as a shield if Thomas should come after her.

I turned back to my brother, watching his response. I could see the flash of recognition on his face, the wheels turning in his head. As long as I’ve known him, Thomas has always been pretty quick on the uptake. I didn’t have to explain anything; Thomas just turned to me and arched an eyebrow. “Her?”

I nodded. “Her.”

Thomas frowned. “And why is she here, exactly? She’s a thief, a warlock, and at least an attempted murderer. Shouldn’t you be convening the White Council for a trial right about now?”

“Technically,” I pointed out, “she hasn’t broken any of the laws.”

Thomas snorted. “You found out she was a girl and went soft.” He gave me a look of disgust and frustration. “Empty night, Harry, don’t you remember how much trouble she’s put us through? Look what her pet did to your arms!” He pressed his palm against my elbow as a demonstration, and the pressure on my wounds sent pain shooting up my arm that took my breath away. The flash of sympathy in his eyes was quickly replaced by a dark rage as Thomas turned towards the girl. He stepped past me and advanced upon Taylor. “If you’re not willing to get rid of her, I will.”

I rushed forward to place myself in front of Thomas, blocking his advance with my body. Behind me Taylor scrambled off the couch and ducked behind it. “Stay away from me, vampire!” She muttered a spell in a language I didn’t recognize, then broke off in a yelp of pain. I looked over my shoulder to see her holding her arm out at the thorns of the manacle dug into her wrist.

“Settle down!” I ordered. “No one’s going to hurt you. And you,” I turned to Thomas, “stop antagonizing her. We’re keeping her around because she was tricked into doing what she did and she wants to help us take down the person who tricked her. Whether she’s broken any laws is for the Council to decide. Right now my top priority is making sure her master doesn’t sacrifice a bunch of kids, and I’m taking all the help I can get.”

Thomas glared at Taylor over my shoulder for a moment. Then he took a step back so that he could look me in the eyes. “Children?” he asked softly.

I nodded. “Her master had been collecting gifted children under the pretense of teaching them magic,” I explained. “The artifacts she’s stolen are used in a ritual that will allow him to absorb their power after he kills them.”

Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, letting out a soft breath. I could see the tension bleeding from his posture. “Alright,” he said, opening his eyes to look at me. “One question first.”

“Shoot.”

“Where do you intend to have her sleep?” I blinked at him in surprise, and Thomas answered me with a wry smile. “Because I already sleep on the couch, and I’m not giving it up.”

“I am _not_ going to sleep in the same room with him!” Taylor cried indignantly from behind the couch. “I know what he is!”

Thomas rolled his eyes. “Please,” he said, voice dripping with scorn. “You’re a little young for my tastes. Besides, I prefer prey that doesn’t struggle quite so much.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. I hadn’t been thinking of sleeping arrangements when I’d brought her here, but Thomas had a point. My apartment was comfortable for one and crowded with two; it simply didn’t have the accommodations to fit three. “She can sleep in the bedroom,” I said wearily. “Thomas, I’ll take the floor. And Mouse,” I looked over at my dog, still sitting in the living room wearing a dopey doggie grin. “You stay with her.” I waved my hand at Taylor. “If she goes for the windows or the lab, sit on her.”

Mouse climbed to his paws and shook himself, then went over to Taylor’s side. The girl glared at me from behind the couch. “You’ve already taken my magic away,” she said bitterly. “Now you’re having me guarded, too?” In spite of her objections, her hand came up to rest on Mouse’s head when he sat at her feet.

“You bet your ass I am. I don’t put it past you to run the moment you get the chance.”

“I’m not running,” Taylor said hotly. “I helped Camden get those artifacts. Hell, I brought some of those kids to him for training! I’m responsible for this whole mess, and I’m not going to just sit by while he murders children with the weapons I gave him! I want him dead!” She slammed her fist into the back of the couch. The poorly-stuffed cushion gave way easily, so it probably wasn’t very satisfying.

“Good,” I told her. “Then you’ll stick around until we go after him tomorrow. Until then, my house, my rules. And you’re still in police custody.”

Taylor made a disgusted noise. “Fi _ne_ ,” she sneered, drawing the word out into three syllables. “Good night.” She turned and went to the door of my bedroom. I hadn’t pointed it out to her, but it wasn’t like it was hard to find; aside from the front door it was the only one in the place. She opened the door with a sharp tug, then turned back to look at us while Mouse trotted in ahead of her. “If the vampire comes in here, I’ll take his head off,” Taylor swore, “magic or no.” Then she turned away and slammed the door shut behind her.

Thomas and I both regarded the door in silence for a moment. Then my brother shook his head and turned to me. “Okay. Now that I’ve been insulted and you’ve been kicked out of your own bedroom, will you explain to me how we went from trying to catch her to teaming up with her? I thought this was all about recovering the knife.”

“In a minute,” I sighed. I turned away from him and trudged into our little kitchen, started opening up cabinets at random. “Let me put something in my belly first; I haven’t eaten since that cold pizza last night.”

“This morning,” Thomas corrected me. “And you haven’t taken your pills either, I’m guessing.” I heard his put-upon sigh as he walked past me into the kitchen to get the pill bottles from where he’d left them. He got out one of each and poured me a glass of water while I stared into the pantry and tried to goad my brain into working.

“Go.” Thomas waved me out of the kitchen. “Sit down before you fall down. I’ll make you something.”

For once in my life, I did what I was told. I stumbled back into the living room and sank down on the couch with a groan. After a few minutes Thomas came over to me with a plate and a glass of water. He set the plate on the couch next to me, scooped the pills off of it, then held them and the glass out to me.

I took both from him and downed the pills, fighting off a sense of _déjà vu_. It was evening already, the dull light of dusk coming through the windows just like the dawn light had been the last time we’d sat like this. I remembered the way things had gone that time, the feeling of Thomas’s hands on my skin while he undressed me, and a shiver ran through my body.

I picked up the plate to distract myself. Thomas had made me a sandwich, which was pretty much the extent of his culinary skills. Vampires don’t have the same nutritional needs as humans, and prior to moving in with me Thomas had always been able to pay someone else to prepare his food.

I took a bite and found the sandwich passable. I stared up at the ceiling as I chewed, stretching my legs out in front of me. In my younger days, I’d been able to bounce back from an all-nighter, a firefight, and skipped meals without much of a problem. Not so, anymore. Between the excitement today and last night, I was pretty worn out. I hoped that I’d be able to get a good night’s sleep in before Toot came with word on Camden.

I turned my head and regarded Thomas, who had taken a seat at the other end of the couch. “Where did you go all day?” I asked him. “Were you just out feeding? You should have taken your phone.”

“You’re right,” Thomas admitted. “But I wasn’t expecting to be gone as long as I was.”

“You lost track of time,” I said. He nodded, looking vaguely embarrassed. I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I guess that can happen when you’re in the middle of an orgy.” I couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from my voice. I just hoped he would assume that I was jealous of him, instead of over him.

Thomas glanced away from me. He went still for a second, the way only vampires can, then shifted in his seat as though trying to get comfortable. At last he said, “I didn’t want what happened last time to happen again.”

I frowned at him, confused. “I’m the one that got injured last night, not you.”

Thomas waved a hand. “Not last night,” he said. “Last _time_.”

I opened my mouth to say he wasn’t making any sense, but stopped before the words came out. Last time. The last time we had run into the Fell Wolves, at the little shopping center a few blocks from McAnally’s. When he’d been injured and Hungry, and we’d been trapped. When he’d fed off of me in order to save us both.

I closed my mouth and looked down at the plate in my lap. “We did what we had to,” I said.

“I know,” Thomas murmured, his voice surprisingly even. “I’m not angry with you for suggesting it. I just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t end up in a position where we had to do it again.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Thomas didn’t want to feed off of me again. He didn’t want to kiss me again. I figured that was as close to a rejection as I was going to get, short of actually asking him if he wanted to sleep with me. But then, I’d always known there couldn’t be any other answer to that question.

Thomas cleared his throat. “So,” he began, his voice a little louder than necessary, “what happened while I was out? You said Murphy called. What did she have?”

“The crime scene prints matched a Missing Persons record.” Between bites of sandwich I told Thomas the whole story, from nabbing Taylor out from under Johnson’s nose, to the spider demon and Taylor’s confession, to hiring Toot to comb the city for Camden and my decision to bring Taylor back to my place for the night, both to protect her and to prevent her from escaping.

“This is a mess,” Thomas said when I’d finished. “We’ve got no solid leads, and I think we both know that the little folk are flighty at best.” I grimaced; he was right. I’d bet my life on Toot and his people in the past, but I hadn’t been relying on their attention spans. It wasn’t as though a pixie was going to forget an impending war between the faerie courts.

Thomas frowned into the fire at the other end of the living room. “Do you think it might be time to call the wardens?”

I sighed and scrubbed a hand back through my hair. Getting the wardens involved was always a tricky bet. To say nothing of the fact that it might get Ramirez in trouble for passing this case along to me, if the wardens were in it would mean that Thomas was out. If they saw me palling around with a vampire they’d assume I was either a traitor or a victim, and either way they would want to get rid of him. I’d had to keep him out of sight when I’d called them in last Halloween, as well as the few times someone had come by to see me since then. I could appreciate the need for more magical firepower when facing down a dark wizard, but when it came down to it I would rather have my brother at my back than any of the wardens.

Besides, they would probably just blow off the case like they had when Ramirez brought it to them. I couldn’t tell them what the artifacts were used for; they’d want to know how I’d learned it, and I couldn’t exactly tell them I had a fallen angel riding shotgun. Even if, by some miracle, they wanted to help, there wasn’t anything they could do about the lack of leads.

I shook my head. “They probably wouldn’t buy it,” I told Thomas. “We’ve got no proof of what’s going on except Ramirez’s hunches and the girl’s testimony, and given how the wardens usually respond, they’d probably just execute the girl and then we’d have less than nothing.”

“So you don’t plan on handing her over when this is done,” Thomas said. It wasn’t a question.

I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what I planned on doing with Taylor when all this was over. “I believe her when she says she didn’t know what was going on.” I looked over at Thomas and met his eyes. “I soulgazed her,” I said. “She’s not a bad person.”

“You think the Council won’t take that into consideration?” he asked gently. “Besides, you said she hadn’t broken any laws.”

“I don’t think she has.” The laws covered only the most egregious misuses of magic- ended a life, manipulating a mind, reanimating a corpse. They were silent on more material crimes like theft or property damage (which was probably for the best, in my case). “Still,” I went on, “if they think that she knowingly aided someone planning to commit murder, it might not matter. And they’re not always too keen on investigating past the obvious. She helped Camden collect artifacts for human sacrifice. That might be enough for them to find her guilty, in itself.”

“So you plan on letting her go?” Thomas asked. I shook my head.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Murphy won’t like that,” Thomas pointed out. “Neither will the Council, if they find out about it.” He regarded me for a moment. “You seem pretty willing to go out on a limb for this girl. Are you that sure she’s innocent?”

“I’m sure,” I told him. I had to be. I was betting everything on it. And I was.

Mostly.

Thomas looked over at the closed door of my bedroom. “She doesn’t seem very happy to be helping us.”

“Cut her some slack,” I said. “She’s scared. She’s dealing with a lot right now, and she’s lashing out. It’s natural. Doesn’t make her a bad kid.” Maybe I was projecting a little there, getting defensive of my past actions rather than hers. After all, I’d been in her shoes, once, and I’d behaved the same way.

Thomas frowned at me. “Okay,” he said, drawing the word out to show his skepticism. I sighed.

“Look, I…” I trailed off and licked my lips. “I know what she’s going through right now, okay?” Thomas nodded slowly and said nothing. He wouldn’t pressure me with questions, but the empty silence was an invitation to go on, if I wanted to. Neither of us had ever talked much about our childhoods, and for good reason. Neither of our families had exactly been the Brady Bunch. But as we sat there together in the living room of my apartment, the only noise the sound of the fire crackling in the hearth, I found I wanted to tell my brother about my past.

“Did I ever tell you about the man who taught me magic?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

I did. The answer was no. I normally didn’t talk about that part of my life unless I had to, and I could count on one hand the number of people I’d met since the trial whom I’d told.

“You know our mom died when I was born,” I began. Thomas nodded. His father had been the one responsible for her death, using an entropy curse that had made it look like she’d died of natural causes during childbirth. I had grown up wondering if I was to blame for my mother’s death. I hadn’t learned differently until a year and a half earlier.

“My father died when I was seven,” I went on, “and I didn’t have any other family.” I glanced over at Thomas. “Well, none that I knew about at the time.” My brother gave me a nod at the acknowledgement. “I ended up in the foster system,” I explained. “Got bounced around different houses, sometimes group homes. Never stayed in one place for very long.” A rush of old emotions washed over me as I recounted my story, threatening to overwhelm me. I took a breath, letting them sit in my chest for a moment before I forced them down and kept talking.

“I was ten when my magic first showed, and not a week later I was adopted by Justin DuMorne. He raised me, taught me how to use my power. He was the closest thing I’d had to family in a long time, and I wanted to do whatever I could to make him proud of me.” My lip twisted in a sneer around the words, and my tone was bitter. Thinking back to the way I had idolized Justin as a boy always brought up a strange mix of anger, self-disgust, and guilt.

“He liked to use pain as a motivator, and beatings. He taught me shields by making me stand in front of a pitching machine without a bat. But I always thought,” my throat started to close up as I remembered the betrayal. I swallowed and forced myself to speak past it. Beside me, Thomas waited without speaking. “I always thought he was doing it because he knew there were dangerous things out there and he wanted me to be ready for them. I thought it was because he cared. Then one day he tied me down and tried to work a spell on me to enslave my mind; and when that failed, he tried to kill me. But I killed him first, and then the Council put my on trial for his murder.” I didn’t quite manage to suppress the shiver that ran through me at the memory.

“Justin never told me about the White Council; he never told me about the Laws of Magic. I hadn’t realized there were any other wizards besides us. He’d kept an entire world of magic hidden from me, in order to manipulate me and keep me dependent on him. He wanted to turn me into a weapon he could use to hurt other people, and I almost didn’t realize it until it was too late.” I paused to steady myself. Thomas looked like he wanted to say something, but I couldn’t stop yet. I nodded in the direction of my bedroom and pressed on.

“That’s what she’s going through now,” I said. “I’ve been there, I know what it’s like; better than anyone. She’s being forced to question everything she’s ever known, and to face the fact that the man she thought of as a father tried to have her killed. She’s scared, and confused, but right now she’s clinging to the one thing she does know, and that’s that she wants to keep those kids safe. As long as that’s our goal too, we can trust her.”

I came to the end of my piece and fell silent. I was breathing hard, and still a little shaky from the intensity of the emotions the memories had stirred up. For several minutes the only sound was the steady crackle of the fire. Then finally Thomas spoke.

“I may not know what it’s like to realize that the person who taught you magic was training you to be a weapon,” my brother said slowly, his face turned away from me and his eyes focused on the flames burning in the fireplace across the room, “but I do know what it feels like to suddenly be thrown into a world you never knew existed, and to realize that a father figure you loved and trusted is trying to kill you.”

I followed his gaze to the fire, staring into it as I considered his words. I should have known that Thomas could empathize with what I was saying. Hell, he’d told me that Lord Raith forbade his children from learning about their vampire heritage until after they’d fed, and killed, for the first time. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain and confusion and guilt that would come from accidentally killing your first lover, and then being forced to confront the reality that you weren’t human, not anymore, and never would be again.

Thomas had fallen silent, and I felt obligated to say something in return. To acknowledge what he’d shared with me, and what it must have taken for him to do it. “You’re right,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Thomas inclined his head in acceptance without taking his gaze from the fire. Silence stretched between us, and I thought that would be the end of the conversation. Just when I was starting to think about sleeping arrangements again, Thomas’s voice startled me out of my thoughts.

“He wasn’t a bad father, when I was growing up,” Thomas confided. His words came slowly, like he wasn’t altogether certain he wanted to speak them. I tried to catch his eye, but my brother was still facing away from me, the flickering firelight making shadows dance across his features. “In fact,” Thomas went on, “he was very involved, even doting. After mom left,” he broke off and I heard him swallow, like he was pushing down tears, “I cried myself to sleep every night for a week.”

I felt a shiver of empathetic pain run through me, but I said nothing. I had known it must have been hard for him, but there was a difference between knowing it and hearing the raw emotion in his voice as he recounted it. I had never thought he would share those memories with me. “And every night that week,” Thomas continued, his voice evening out, “my father sat with me until I fell asleep. He could have killed me any moment during that time. Maybe he even thought about it. But he didn’t. I didn’t find out about it until years after the fact, but it wasn’t until the day I turned that he started putting his plans to kill me into motion.”

I frowned into the fire. I hated to think of young Thomas, only five years old, crying over the disappearance of his mother, wondering if she didn’t love him anymore; and being comforted by a man who wanted him dead. Probably the only reason Lord Raith hadn’t killed him then and there was because the White Court considered doing the deed directly to be the height of vulgarity. And Thomas probably knew that.

I’d wondered in the past if he resented me for the fact that our mother abandoned him to be with my father. I thought he might have, at least when he’d first found out about me. I’d always had this thought (not one I would ever say to his face) that he didn’t have the right to be jealous, since he’d at least had five years with her while I hadn’t had five minutes. But, turning that around, I’d had seven years with my father. Thomas might have had a lifetime with his, but surely whatever good memories he had of the man were just as poisoned as my good memories of Justin. We were both orphans, after a fashion.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, though I knew how little the words meant. I tried to find a way to express my empathy and my outrage at the suffering he’d been put through, both by our mother as a child and by his father as a young man. “It’s not fair,” I said at last. “You didn’t deserve that.”

“Neither did you,” Thomas answered, his voice steady now. He turned his head slightly towards me, regarding me from the corner of his eye. “I often wished, as a child, that she had taken me with her,” he confessed, “but that was for selfish reasons. Knowing what I do now, I wish I’d been with you so you wouldn’t have been alone. And so I could have protected you from him.”

My heart clenched at the admission, and I curled my hands into fists to keep myself from reaching for to him. Thomas would have been about fourteen when I was orphaned, little more than a child himself; and seventeen when I was adopted by DuMorne. Granted, I’d been sixteen when I killed him, but I’d had magic at my disposal. As far as I knew, Thomas hadn’t even turned until he was college-aged, at least. At seventeen, as an unwitting, powerless mortal, he’d have been an adequate protector against schoolyard bullies and the crushing loneliness of orphanhood, but certainly not against a former warden of the White Council. 

I shook my head. “You were just a kid,” I reminded him. “And you didn’t have any powers. It wouldn’t have been fair to ask that from you.”

“No more than to ask you to endure it,” Thomas replied. He was facing me directly now, his grey eyes intent upon me. I looked away, rubbing the back of my neck, and shrugged.

It was unusual for someone to insist so adamantly that I’d been mistreated, outside of the obvious violations of the Laws. Plenty of old guard wardens, trained up in a time before child labor laws, would have thought using baseballs instead of rocks was a mercy. And even though I knew that what I’d endured was abuse by present-day society’s standards, there was a part of me that still insisted it had been for the best, because it had made me strong. I suppose that was proof of just how thoroughly I’d been indoctrinated at Justin’s hand.

I nearly jumped when Thomas nudged my shoulder, reaching across the distance between us to jab me with his fingertips. I looked back at him and raised my brows in question. He watched me from the other end of the couch, his hand fallen to his lap, head tilted slightly and grey eyes narrowed. “You can’t be so stupid as to not realize that you deserved better.”

I blinked at him in surprised, then let out a rough laugh. Trust Thomas to find a way to turn a comforting statement into something condescending. “That’s really reassuring, Thomas.”

My brother shrugged. “Just checking,” he said innocently. “You can be terribly dense sometimes, and your self-sacrificing tendencies suggest that you don’t know your own worth.”

I snorted and shook my head at him, but my heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some truth in what he’d said.  At the same time, I took a certain pride in all my acts of selflessness. Justin DuMorne had taught me to be unfailingly loyal to him alone, and damn everybody else. It was Ebenezer McCoy, the White Council wizard who had taken responsibility for me after the trial, who had taught me that those with power have a responsibility to use it wisely. When I risked myself, I didn’t do it because DuMorne had taught me my life was worthless; I did it because someone else had taught me that no life was.

I had the feeling that Thomas would only mock me if I tried to tell him that, though. He went to great lengths to portray himself as careless of other people’s lives, willing to sacrifice bystanders if it would keep him safe, to the point that I half thought he believed it himself. But I could see right through the act. He would never have been so careful when he fed if he didn’t think his partners’ lives worth preserving.

I looked back at him from my end of the couch, a smile tugging at my lips. Thomas arched a perfect black eyebrow in question. I shook my head. I opened my arms, extending a hand towards him in clear invitation. He eyed me dubiously, and for a second I thought he might make a comment speculating on possible head injuries during the apprehension of a dangerous fugitive. Physical affection had never been our thing. Then again, neither had heart-to-hearts about our respective pasts. After what we’d just shared with one another, a hug felt like a natural conclusion.

Thomas must have felt the same way, because after some deliberation he shifted closer on the couch, closing the distance between us. My greater height is pretty much all in my legs, so seated like that we were almost of a height. When I put my arms around Thomas and pulled him to me, his chin naturally came to rest on my shoulder, and if I’d turned my head a little I could have buried my face in his hair. The temptation was there as a passing thought, but it was easy to batter down; at the moment, all I wanted to do was comfort my brother and be comforted by him.

Thomas, however, seemed to be having trouble getting with the program. Although he’d raised his arms to wrap around me, his body was rigid in my grasp. I wasn’t entirely sure he was even breathing. I rolled my eyes and gave him a light squeeze that only seemed to ratchet the tension in his body even higher. “Can’t you relax?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was whining. “Hell’s bells, it’s not like I’m about to stab you in the back or anything.”

“ _Et tu, Brute_?” Thomas drawled in my ear, but the derision in his tone seemed to be directed more to himself than to me.

I ran one hand down his back in what I hoped was a soothing manner and aimed for annoyed instead of beseeching with my tone. “Please?”

I heard Thomas draw in a deep breath, felt his chest expand with it in the circle of my arms. He let the breath out in a heavy sigh. For a moment I thought it was an expression of annoyance, and my heart sank a little. Then I felt Thomas turn his head so that his face was pressed into the side of my neck, and slowly I became aware of the tension melting from his body. I continued to run my hand over his back, feeling him relax by inches under my touch. At last he sagged against me, his weight resting on my chest and his breath warm on my skin. I was painfully aware that it was the closest and most vulnerable he’d ever allowed himself to be with me.

For the first time, I held my brother close in my arms. My brother who had been abandoned by our mother as a young child, while she ran off and started a new family. My brother who, in spite of that, wished to have grown up with me and kept me safe and sheltered. My brother who had been doing everything in his power to do just that since we met. My brother who had risked his life to accommodate my self-sacrificing tendencies even while I’d been checking out his ass and speculating on his motives. My brother who had had my back every day since I’d learned what we were to each other. My brother who loved me, even if he could never say it out loud, and whom I loved in ways I would never dare to say.

My chest constricted with the sheer force of my emotions, and I felt tears sting my eyes. _Stars_.

My dear, beautiful, precious, sexy, _obnoxious_ brother.

Who even now stank of stale sex and whose arms wrapped around my body were sticky with dried sweat.

I felt a stirring of lust in the pit of my stomach and rolled my eyes skyward, annoyed and ashamed of my own reaction. Between one pass of my hand over his smooth back and the next, our embrace had gone from wholesome and fraternal to something indecent, and I was the one to blame for it.

Before I could even start to disengage from the embrace, I felt Thomas go statue-still in my arms. Almost as if he had sensed that something had changed.

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** this chapter contains some discussion of the seriously messed up family dynamics in House Raith. Nothing is shown or discussed in graphic detail, but there are brief mentions of child sex abuse and (non-consensual) incest.
> 
> * * *
> 
> This chapter. Oh man, this chapter. Confession scenes are always hard for me to write, and this one was no exception. I scrapped huge chunks of it and rewrote it several time, because I felt like I wasn't keeping them in character. I'm fairly satisfied with how it ended up, though I still don't think it's entirely perfect.

I froze when I felt Thomas tense up, shock and fear burning away the lust I’d felt. I was sure that I hadn’t entertained those inappropriate thoughts long enough for my body to respond; and it was reasonable, knowing Thomas, to think that he’d grown tired of the embrace and would want out of it.

But as I felt him carefully pulling away from me, I knew those explanations rang hollow. I knew what Thomas was; I knew what abilities he had. I knew there had been times when I’d avoided touching him just as much as he had avoided me, for fear of what he might sense in the contact between us.

As Thomas settled on the couch a little apart from me, I searched his face for some indication of why he’d done it. I dreaded what I might find there. Revulsion, maybe, or anger; or worse than that, shame. But all I saw in his eyes was a look of resignation.

“You deserve better than this, too,” Thomas said softly.

I stared back at him, my brain scrambling to deny the meaning I knew to be in his words. “What?” I asked. My voice came out in a croak.

Thomas huffed. “You know perfectly well what.” He made a gesture at the air between us. I swallowed around a lump that had formed in my throat and kept my mouth shut. I was sure that if I opened it a dozen frantic excuses and denials would pour out, each one more feeble and more damning than the last.

My silence conveyed my guilt just as well.

“Harry,” Thomas said reasonably, “you know what I am. I feed off of lust; you should know that I can sense it in others around me. And this is not the first time I’ve sensed it from you.”

I couldn’t hold his gaze in the face of that accusation. I bowed my head, shame crawling sickeningly through my belly. I thought I’d been careful enough to shield him from this. “I-”

“Have nothing to be ashamed of,” Thomas finished for me, his voice calm and sensible. He was trying to act like he wasn’t bothered, like it didn’t disturb him that his brother wanted him in ways that were obscene. I might have believed it more if he hadn’t stood up from the couch and paced a few steps away from me.

I felt his rejection like a physical blow, something that made my chest ache worse than broken ribs and set my ears to ringing. I barely caught Thomas’s next words.

“We both know that it’s been difficult for me to feed as much as I need to over this past year,” he continued from the other side of the room. He was running a hand over one of the shelves that held my paperbacks, looking everywhere except my eyes. “And we both know that the Hunger sometimes influences others in ways I can’t control. None of this is your fault.”

Thomas’s eyes flicked past me to the door of my bedroom. “I’d suggest we go to separate corners, but the girl might take offence if one of us went in there.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Maybe it would be better if I left for the night.”

My heart sank at his words. I had known Thomas would react like this if he ever found out. I had known he would blame himself for corrupting me, when in reality the gruesome desire had been inside me all along. I tried to catch his eyes as I said, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do this to me.”

I saw a small, sad smile play on his features. I wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but I knew it would be unwelcome. I stayed where I was.

“I never wanted things to be like this between us,” Thomas murmured. “Empty night, I would never have chosen it if I could. But the Hunger doesn’t care about what its host wants; only about feeding itself.” He closed his eyes, brow furrowed as if he were in pain, and I wondered if the Hunger was fighting him now. He next words were so soft I almost missed them, though there was no missing the bitterness in his tone. “And of course, it’s so much harder to contain when its desires coincide with my own.”

Thomas’s desires.

 _Stars_. Was it possible?

“Thomas,” I said, rising from the couch to go to him.

He must have realized, then, that I had heard his words and grasped their meaning. He turned away from me, his body going all-over tense like he was ready to fight or flee. “No, Harry.”

“Thomas,” I insisted. I stepping closer and put my hand on his arm to turn him towards me. It was like grabbing a marble statue. His body remained unnaturally still, but he turned his head to face me. I saw that his eyes had gone a few shades paler.

“Harry,” Thomas said, his tone low and dangerous. “Stop.”

I stopped. I realized that the grip I had on his arm might have been painful to a regular person; I eased up, but I didn’t let go completely. My left hand was clenched into a fist at my side, though I knew I had no intention of striking him. My breath was coming in short, shallow gasps, desperation boiling in my chest. I had never dared to dream that Thomas might feel something for me. Clearly we both had a great deal of shame to work through, but if we both wanted one another then it couldn’t be so terrible, could it? How long had I wanted him and yet known with a horrible certainty that I couldn’t have him? How long had Thomas thought the same about me? Now I finally knew what he felt. The thing I’d longed for hopelessly for so long was close enough to taste. I couldn’t let Thomas deny us both over something as insignificant as cultural mores.

“Thomas,” I begged, holding his gaze in a way I never did even without the risk of soulgaze. “ _Please_.”

Thomas looked away from me. I felt the muscles of his arm shift beneath my fingers as he clenched and unclenched his fist. For a moment I thought I’d been able to reach him. Then, with a growl of frustration he jerked free from my grasp and shoved me away.

It was a light shove, compared to what he could have done, but it caught me off guard and I stumbled back, falling hard to the floor. Thomas stood above me, regret and anger warring in his expression. “You think you want this,” he said harshly, “but you don’t.”

Regret won out, and Thomas held out a hand to me. I knocked it away and struggled to my feet, glaring at him. Then, just to make a point, I shoved him back. I knew that if he’d wanted to he could have stayed rooted to the spot, but he allowed himself to stumble back from my blow. “Yes I do!”

“The Hunger,” he began.

“Damn the Hunger!” I cried. “I know what I felt when Lara and Inari aimed that at me, and I have never, ever felt that from you.” He said nothing, his face turned away from me. I was panting from the exertion and the force of my sudden rage. How had I come to be so mad at someone I loved so dearly?

With difficulty, I evened my breathing enough that my voice was steady when I spoke again. “Do you think I don’t know my own mind well enough to realize an idea’s been planted in it?”

Thomas pursed his lips. I guessed he was thinking a lot of things about how getting into people’s heads and making them think they wanted something was what the Hunger did, but he didn’t say any of that. Instead he looked up at me and asked, his tone dry, “Do you think lusting after your brother is an idea you would have on your own?”

For the first time since I’d realized I was attracted to him, I felt the tiniest flicker of doubt. How did I know, really, that these thoughts were my own? None of the women Thomas brought home seemed to think anything of their admittedly uncharacteristic behavior.

But none of those women had known what Thomas was, or what he was doing to them. I had been aware from the moment I’d met him that he had abilities that could influence me. I had been on guard for any thoughts that didn’t seem to belong, and even then my appreciation for his body had felt natural. After all, how many times had I felt my heart speed up sneaking glances at other boys in the locker-room? I had felt the undeniable pull of the Hunger when his sisters had invoked it, but I’d never been pulled to him like that. Others had. People had been driven so mad with lust that they threw themselves at him in his workplace. Didn’t the fact that I’d hadn't done the same prove that my thoughts were my own?

Thomas must have read my brief moment of doubt on my face. He took a step back from me, his wry smile not hiding the sadness in his eyes. “There, you see? This isn’t you.”

“Yes it is,” I insisted. “I know it is.”

I saw the flash of annoyance in Thomas’s eyes, but he kept it from his tone when he spoke. “Harry,” he began.

“What about you?” I asked, surprising myself with the outburst. Thomas’s eyes narrowed.

“What _about_ me?”

“ _You_ want me,” I said. He opened his mouth, but I cut him off before he could speak. “Don’t lie to my face, Thomas. I know you do. You all but said it yourself, earlier. If you can come to want me, why is it so hard to imagine the reverse?”

I’d struck a nerve. I could see the walls going up behind his eyes as easily as if they’d been made of brick and mortar. Thomas took a few steps back from me, seeming to contemplate his answer. When he finally looked back up his eyes were gleaming a metallic silver.

“Within House Raith, incestuous feedings are _de rigueur_.” His tone was flippant, but his lips curled in a sneer of contempt, or self-contempt, around the words. A coldness swept over me; I felt sick to my stomach. “The White Court is a snake pit,” Thomas went on. “Everyone is looking to expand their sphere of influence, and what better way than to leverage the Hunger against rivals and would-be allies? That they happen to share blood matters little. After all, the _Hunger_ doesn’t care.”

I swallowed around a sudden bitter taste in my mouth. I knew that the White King, Thomas’s father, had fed upon his own daughters. He twisted their minds, convinced them of his love so that they would be loyal to him, and stole energy from them to sustain himself at the same time. Thomas had implied that he’d been spared a similar fate because his father’s appetite didn’t extend to males, and I’d later puzzled out that our mother’s death curse, leveled when Thomas was still a child, had made it impossible for the White King to feed off of anyone ever again. Thomas had escaped being abused by his father. It had never occurred to me that Lord Raith was not alone in those horrendous acts.

Hell’s bells. What had happened to my brother in that house?

“Save your pity, Harry,” Thomas said suddenly. I met his eyes and saw a cheerless smile touch his lips. “I’m not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me. I always stayed well out of the political mire, precisely so that I would not become a target for that or worse. I’m telling you this so that you’ll understand; aberrant sexual desires are in my nature, as a member of House Raith.”

If that was not a self-denigrating statement, I didn’t know what was. I’d known that my brother had issues, most of them stemming from guilt over what he was and what he had to do to others to survive, but now I could see that that barely scratched the surface of his shame and self-hatred. He hated what he was. He hated what his family’s example told him he had to be. Failing to meet their expectations couldn’t have made it any easier: it must be hard to take pride in his humanity when the rest of his family saw it as foolishness.

I wanted to show my brother that he was wrong about himself. There was good in him; I knew it. Hell, once you got to know him well enough to see through the act of indifference, it was blindingly obvious. Thomas was not the Hunger. He was his choice to resist the Hunger. And he deserved to be able to take pride in that.

“Thomas,” I said, not sure myself how I meant to follow it up. He didn’t give me the chance to figure it out.

“You,” Thomas said pointedly, “are not a Raith. Desiring men, desiring family members- that’s not in your nature. If you’ve come to want me, it’s only because I’ve made you.”

I made a noise of disgust and disbelief.

Thomas’s eyes narrowed and he frowned, confused. I gestured sharply. “Come off it, Thomas. Do you think you Raiths have a monopoly on ‘aberrant sexual desires’? I’ve liked guys as much as girls as far back as I can remember; my first crush in grade school was on a guy. And my first girlfriend was, legally, my adopted sister. You and I didn’t even grow up together. Blood counts for a lot, believe me, but from where I’m standing it just doesn’t have the same ‘ick’ factor as lusting after someone you were in diapers with. And you and I are only half blood anyway.”

Thomas stared at me, his expression still closed off, unreadable. I think he was trying to wrap his head around everything I’d just told him.  I felt a cynical smile pull at my lips. I’d never pretended to be some paragon of sexual virtue. If Thomas had imagined me as one, he had another thing coming.

“You _can’t_ want me,” Thomas said at last. He seemed confused by the very possibility. My bitter smile turned sad as I contemplated my benighted brother. He’d probably convinced himself long ago that it was hopeless; that his affection was unwelcome and that he would be taking advantage of me if he acted upon it. I knew what that felt like. To believe that it might be otherwise, that he was allowed to feel this way for me and that I returned his feelings, probably seemed too good to be true. 

“But I do,” I told him.

“It’s not you,” Thomas insisted. I rolled my eyes.

“If you can’t trust yourself, Thomas, then at least trust me. You do, don’t you?” He frowned; didn’t answer. I didn’t need an answer. I knew he did.

I took a step towards my brother. When he didn’t back away I took another, and another, until there was barely a foot between us. Thomas had tilted his head back to keep his eyes on my face. They weren’t chrome silver any more, but they weren’t the usual dark grey either. 

“I know my mind,” I told him solemnly. “I know myself. I know what I want. And I want you.”

Thomas shook his head, but it didn’t seem like a denial anymore. He said, as if to himself, “There are so many reasons why this won’t work.”

I reached for his hand, brushing my fingertips across the back of it but not actually taking it in mine. I wanted that to be his decision. “As long as one of them isn’t that you don’t want it, I don’t really care.”

Thomas let out a rough, tired laugh. “Centuries of social convention,” he began in a tone that suggested he’d been keeping a list, “decades worth of personal traumas, unresolved feelings for other parties on both our parts, the White Council, the White Court, the Hunger, and finally-”

He reached out suddenly, placing one hand on my cheek. My breath hitched in my throat as his thumb brushed over my lips. I stared into his pale grey eyes, entranced. Before I could get over the shock enough to respond, I saw him wince and felt him pull his hand back. “This,” Thomas finished, holding his hand up so I could see the blistering burn across his palm.

On instinct I reached for his hand to inspect the wound, but I stopped myself before my fingers brushed his. I knew where those burns had come from.

Thomas had explained it to me years before, when I’d inadvertently fended off his sister Inari when the Hunger had threatened to overwhelm her. The Raiths fed off of lust, but love -pure, selfless love- was anathema to them. Merely touching a memento from a loving couple could cause them to become gravely ill. Trying to feed off of someone who was in love literally burned them.

It was the reason Thomas had been forced to part ways with Justine, after she had gone to him knowing that his mortal injuries might only be healed by feeding to the death. He had stopped himself at the last minute, unconcerned with the effect it might have on him, and she had survived, if barely. Not that it changed the outcome. In the end, their love for one another forced them apart.

As for me, the last person I’d been with was Susan. She had spurned my proposal of marriage years ago, fearing that her new half-vampire nature would lead her to hurt or kill me. We’d shared a single night since then, when she’d been back in town on assignment. I hadn’t touched another person in almost three years, but our love for one another was so strong that it still protected me from the Raiths’ Hunger.

Unresolved feelings for other parties on both our parts, Thomas had said.

Wasn’t that the truth.

I looked at the angry burns over my brother’s hand, suddenly uncomfortably reminded of my own burn scars. When I’d realized that he desired me as well, I had thought that there was hope for us both. I had been loath to let anything stand in our way, including Thomas’s concerns for my safety and sanity. Now we were past all that, for the time being at least. He was close enough to touch, close enough to taste, and yet I couldn’t. The conflict was excruciating.

But the idea of harming him with my touch was worse.

I let my hands drop helplessly to my sides. I met Thomas’s eyes and saw the weariness there, the sadness. I felt it mirrored in my own heart.

“Isn’t there a way to break the protection?” I asked him.

“Do you really want to?” Thomas drew his hand back to inspect the burns for himself. “You love her; that much is obvious.”

I shook my head. I felt exhausted. “That ship sailed a long time ago. Susan isn’t coming back.” I watched him for a moment as he picked at the blisters without speaking. A tiny, painful thought burned in my mind. “What about you?” I asked, my voice hushed. “You love Justine, too.”

“Yes.” He looked up at last, meeting my eyes. “But as you said, that ship sailed. Just being around her anymore is,” he broke off, grimaced. I could take his meaning. As much as he loved Justine, being in her company was a constant reminder of what they couldn’t have.

“Besides,” Thomas continued, “I don’t have a choice about whether I sleep with other people. You do, and you haven’t.”

“Yeah, well.” I shrugged, vaguely embarrassed by my answer to that question. “There’s only one person I’ve wanted to sleep with, and up ‘til now I didn’t think I’d get the chance.”

Thomas didn’t answer right away. He eyed me for a moment, then seemed to develop an intense interest in the low fire crackling in the hearth. He turned away from me. I sank down onto the couch with a groan and stretched my legs out before me. I massaged my forehead, trying to stave off a growing headache, while I waited for him to speak.

“Of course the protection can be broken,” Thomas said to the fireplace on the far wall. “It’s a simple matter of sleeping with someone you’re not in love with.”

I glanced up at him. Sleep with someone else?

As if that were simple.

I’ve never been the sort of guy who goes around having casual sex. It’s not an issue of morals; it’s just that when it comes to pleasure without an emotional connection, I don’t see much point in going through all the effort of finding a willing partner when my hand will suffice. And while my past relationships might not all have been love matches like the one I’d had with Susan, they’d all had months of build-up before things moved to the bedroom. Finding a random person to sleep with to break the protection, I wouldn’t know where to start.

And casual sex with a third party didn’t exactly seem like a clean start to a relationship. Particularly not a relationship with someone I cared so deeply about.

At the same time, what choice did I have? As reluctant as I was to go through with it, I could hardly give up something I’d so desperately longed for just because the buy-in price was a little steep.

“Too much to ask?” Thomas’s voice interrupted my thoughts. I looked over at him and saw him shrug. His tone was casual, as if he didn’t care one way or another. I knew that that composure was feigned. I could see the tension in Thomas’s body as he waited for my answer.

I frowned, struggling to put my thoughts into words. “I don’t like it,” I admitted, “but if that’s what it takes, I’ll do it. I’m just not exactly sure _how_ to do it.”

Thomas’s eyebrows flicked up. An expression of great amusement broke onto his face. “Old DuMorne never gave you ‘The Talk’?”

I shot my brother a withering glare. His smile dwindled and fell. “I can bring you someone,” Thomas offered. “It wouldn’t be hard to talk them into a threesome. Man, woman; old, young. Whatever you’d like.”

I searched his eyes, half wanting it to be another joke, but I knew it wasn’t. I swallowed and looked away.

Back when I’d catalogued all two hundred and fifty-four reasons why Thomas and I couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be together, one of the items on my list had been the Hunger’s appetite. I knew that, after Justine, Thomas would be reluctant to endanger someone by feeding off of them exclusively, and that even if by some miracle we managed to get together he would still need to feed off of other people. He’d still need to sleep with other people.

But it was one thing to know that, and quite another to be there in the room, to watch him with someone else and share him with them in the moment. Especially if I had yet to have him for myself. I didn’t know if I could take it.

“It’s not the solution you want, is it?” Thomas said. It wasn’t a question. “I don’t like it much, either. There aren’t any good answers here.”

He fell silent once more, turned away from me and walked over to the fireplace to lean against it, one hand braced on the mantel. I picked at the seam of the couch cushion. Just moments ago I had hugged my brother for the first time on this couch. I could still remember the feel of his body in my arms, his breath on my neck. Holding him like that had felt like a miracle in and of itself, but the things that had followed were like something from my most private and precious daydreams. I felt closer to him than ever, but at the same time so very far away.

I saw a flash of movement from the corner of my eye and looked up to see Thomas coming back towards me. There was a look of resolve on his face as he stepped between my outstretched legs and stopped before me. He braced his hands on the back of the couch to either side of my head and leaned down, until there were mere inches between my upturned face and his. “Let me try something,” Thomas murmured.

I licked my lips. “Try what?” I asked, my voice rough. Thomas didn’t answer. Instead he lifted his burned hand from the couch and touched my face once more. I knew it must hurt him to have the blistered skin make contact with something, but I didn’t shy away to spare his pain. That wasn’t my decision to make.

Besides, it was incredible just to feel his palm against my cheek, his thumb brushing over my lips. His touch was gentle, as if he were afraid that I might break if he pressed too hard. Given the strength I knew he could display when he drew upon the Hunger, that fear wasn’t entirely unfounded. 

I let my eyes fall shut and leaned into the touch, showing him that I welcomed it. I turned my face in his hand so that I could press a kiss against the burnt skin. I knew it was more likely to exacerbate the pain than to ease it, but that wasn’t really the point. I needed to touch him. I needed to show him that I wanted him to touch me.

Thomas’s thumb brushed my jaw, stroking over my skin. With gentle pressure on my cheek, he urged me to turn back to him. I opened my eyes. He had leant in close; so close our noses could have brushed, and our warm breath mingled in the space between us. His eyes had darkened.

At first I attributed it to the way his pupils had dilated, the circle of black eclipsing most of the colorful iris. Then I realized that it was more than an optical illusion. I was used to Thomas’s eyes ranging from slate grey to chrome silver in color, but now they were a deep steel blue. I had never before seen them so dark, or so blue. I knew that his eyes grew paler as the Hunger came to the forefront. By that token, his eyes growing darker like this could only mean that he’d locked it away as deep in his mind as he could.

I felt my heart quicken as I stared into my brother’s eyes. There could be no question of what he intended. I had never forgotten the way his mouth had felt, soft and warm on mine, the one time I had tasted him. I ached to feel it again, yet I hesitated, unsure if I should make the first move. If Thomas was holding back the Hunger, he needed to concentrate. I didn’t dare startle him.

Above me, Thomas remained still. I could feel the warmth of his breath ghosting over my face and neck, but aside from that he did not move. His dark eyes were locked on mine. There was an intensity about it that made me wonder if it might be possible somehow to trigger a second soulgaze. I felt incredibly exposed as I waited, literally holding my breath, for him to act.

“Harry,” Thomas whispered like a prayer, and I realized at last that he was asking for permission. How like Thomas to be uncertain of his welcome at a time like this.

“Please,” I whispered, “Thomas. I want you.”

He let out a breath like a sigh of relief and at long last leaned down to kiss me. I let him take the lead, cautious of his delicate control over the Hunger. His mouth moved against mine for a moment before his tongue brushed over my lips. I opened for him instantly. Thomas’s tongue swept over the roof of my mouth, tasting me, and I eagerly met it with my own. He tasted just like I remembered. Stars, how I had ached to feel his mouth on mine like this again.

I lifted a hand to tangle in his hair, burying my fingers in the silken locks and clinging tight. I used my grip to tilt his head just a fraction and –there!- the angle was perfect to press our mouths together, lips sliding, tongues dancing. We parted briefly to catch our breath and then dove back in. Thomas’s other hand came to the back of my neck while mine wrapped firmly around his shoulders as I tried to pull him further into me.

He let himself be dragged down. I grunted against his mouth when his weight fell against my side. Our lips parted briefly as he tried to maneuver. I wasn’t much help; all I could think of was dragging his mouth back to mine, and damn where the limbs ended up. Then Thomas got one leg on the other side of mine, straddling my lap, and we were kissing again.

I was more than willing to admit that the position change was a good idea. With him on my lap like this, on top of me, over me, I could seal my lips over the pulse in his neck and draw delicious groans from his mouth. I could find the hem of his shirt and slip a hand underneath, push up the fabric to slide over the smooth, hot skin beneath. Best of all, I could pull his hips close until they were flush against mine, feel against my belly the growing hardness in his pants and the subtle rocking of his hips against the answering hardness in my own.

I was just working on getting both hands on his shirt to pull it up and off when Thomas suddenly shoved me back with both hands and wrenched himself away with such force he almost fell from my lap. I tried to grab him to steady him, but he cried out and flinched back from my touch. I snatched my hands back. I remembered the burns on his palm.

Thomas grabbed the back of the couch with one hand and managed to steady himself. His body was rigid and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. Slowly he lifted his other hand to rest on the couch on the other side of my head. The vampire stillness left him as he let his head hang in the space between us, though the tautness in his muscles remained. A shudder ran through his body as he struggled to suppress his demon.

I forced myself to relax, because sending off fear signals was not going to help him calm down. He was trying to breathe calmly, though not entirely succeeding. I followed his example. My heart was racing both from the excitement of what we’d been doing and the adrenaline of what had followed. My burgeoning erection had died down; unpleasant surprises and stinging guilt can do that to a man.

Careful not to let my skin brush against his, I grabbed the fabric of Thomas’s shirt in my hands and pulled it up. Underneath, I could see the red marks where my hands had been touching his skin. A fresh wave of guilt spiked through me. I let the fabric fall and lowered my hands to the couch.

Clearly, Thomas had been hoping to spare the both of us some heartache by finding a way to break the protection without a stranger. Unfortunately, the pull of the Hunger was too strong, even to someone who was protected. I suppose it was a mercy, in a way, that his control had broken now rather than later. Clothes shed, skin bared, bodies pressed together- if his control had slipped in a situation like that, the burns would have been extensive.

Thomas shuddered above me once more, then some of the tension seemed to bleed from his body. Slowly he lifted his head. I winced when I saw the angry red mark where I’d been busy sucking a bruise into his neck.

His stormcloud grey eyes found mine. His mouth pulled into an expression of chagrin. “I tried.”

“Don’t worry.” I lifted a hand to hover over his shoulder, waiting for his nod before I laid it down. “We’ll find a way around it. You can bring me someone. I can go to a bar, or something. Or, hell, I’m sure there are plenty of hookers in Chicago.” I babbled out whatever suggestions I could think of. I didn’t like any of them, but anything would be better than seeing him flinch from my touch like that again.

I tried to catch Thomas’s eye, but he’d turned his head away. He shifted on my lap, slid off to stand before me on the floor. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Thomas scowled at the floor. He spoke slowly, like he was choosing his words with care. “This thing you have, Harry. It’s called ‘protection’ for a reason. Humans that get involved with my kind don’t usually live very long.”

I thought of Justine, the only person I’d met who’d been involved with a White Court vampire. She was still alive, if barely. I also knew that Lord Raith had had several wives over the years, and Lara had been married at least once. Neither of them struck me as the type to be overly concerned with their partners’ wellbeing. The Raiths viewed their human prey much like humans viewed livestock, to be kept for milk or slaughtered as the occasion dictated.

But Thomas wasn’t like that, and I sure as hell wasn’t a milk cow.

“Thomas, that’s ridiculous. You’re not going to hurt me. Why would you?” He pursed his lips, said nothing. I stood up from the couch so I was level with him, and laid my hand on his arm. “Hey,” I murmured, “I trust you.”

Thomas just rolled his eyes and stepped away from my touch. “It’s not about trust,” he insisted. “Once the protection’s broken, I’ll feed off of you. I won’t be able to stop myself, any more than I was just now.”

“So what?” I asked. “I’m a wizard. I’ve got energy to spare.”

Thomas didn’t seem pleased with that answer. He probably thought I didn’t fully grasp the dangers, or the amount of power he needed to take to satisfy the Hunger. I hesitated, then added in a softer voice, “I wouldn’t have to be the only one you fed on.”

That got his attention, and Thomas finally raised his head to look at me. He searched my eyes, like he was trying to see if I meant it. I held his gaze. I did.

I didn’t like the idea of Thomas sleeping with other people, but I knew it was necessary. When Thomas had been with Justine he had fed on her alone. It had taken a lot out of her, and she’d been weak even before she’d nearly died. Thomas’s Hunger was too great for one person, even one wizard, to sustain. I knew that he didn’t really want to sleep around, any more than I wanted him to do it, but we both recognized the necessity. I could see that he was grateful for my understanding. But that wasn’t the end of his concerns.

“What if I get hurt?” Thomas asked me. I frowned, and started to say that he could just go and hunt like always, but then I realized what he meant. He wasn’t talking about things like bloody gashes or broken bones; he meant something like a shot to the heart, like the wound that had nearly killed him, and nearly killed Justine to heal.

Justine had gone to him of her own volition, determined to save him even if it cost her her life. Thomas had been mad with Hunger. If she hadn’t gone to him he might have attacked someone. I could probably defend myself against him if that happened- but I wasn’t sure I’d want to. I couldn’t swear that, in Justine’s position, I wouldn’t do the same damned thing.

That definitely wasn’t what Thomas wanted to hear.

What else could I do, then? Perhaps a spell to suppress the Hunger, so he wouldn’t attack the staff at a hospital. But that was no good for an injury like the one he’d sustained, which would have killed a normal human instantly. Maybe a healing potion, then; I could ask Bob- except that potions went bad after a few days, and it would take a lot out of me to keep making them. An enchantment, then. Something like my kinetic rings, that I could put little bits of energy into until it added up. That should work, though it’d be damned complicated…

I forced aside the magical calculations spinning through my mind. Now wasn’t the time to run to my lab and cook up new spells. I couldn’t solve this with a potion or enchantment. That had never been what this was about.

“You didn’t kill Justine,” I said softly. “I don’t believe you’d kill me, either.” I took a step toward Thomas and laid my hand on his arm again. “Like I said, I trust you.”

He smiled wryly and shook his head. “That makes one of us.”

There was a response on my lips but I bit it back. This wasn’t something we were going to resolve tonight, or any night soon. What had happened to Justine –what he had _done_ to Justine- had changed the way Thomas looked at himself. He knew exactly what could happen if he lost control, and just how easy it would be for that to happen. He doubted himself in ways he probably hadn’t before, and he was afraid to let anyone get close.

I put my other hand on Thomas’s shoulder and drew him to me, pulling him into a hug. He let me do it, but he didn’t hug me back. “I trust you,” I said again. “That’s enough for me. I don’t know what’ll happen if you get hurt, but I trust you. I want to be with you.”

I felt Thomas draw in a breath. Then, slowly, he lifted his arms and wrapped them around me, too. Relief washed through me, warm and liquid. I leaned my head down to rest on his shoulder. Thomas leaned his head against mine. His fingers stroked the hair at the nape of my neck, sending pleasant little shivers through my body. I let my arms slide down to loop around his waist. I don’t know how long we stood there like that, just holding one another. It felt like a long time, but I was in no hurry for it to end.

At last Thomas broke the silence. “Better get some sleep before tomorrow,” he murmured. “Big day, and all.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Let’s go to bed.” I took his hand and started to pull him towards the couch, but he stayed where he was. I turned back to him and raised an eyebrow. “I said go to bed, not have sex. Get your mind out of the gutter!”

Thomas’s eyebrows shot up and a little smile played at his lips. He followed me to the couch. I took the blanket that was thrown over the back and unfolded it. Thomas picked up his pillow from the floor. For a moment we both stared at the couch, wondering if we could both fit on it. But I had seen it hold Thomas and a partner many times, and though I was bigger than any of his dates I was fairly certain we could manage. Besides, even if I’d wanted to take the floor, the spare blankets were in my bedroom. I wasn’t going to risk Taylor’s wrath by knocking on the door.

Thomas set the pillow on the couch and motioned for me to sit down. It seemed sensible to fit the taller person in first, so I did. I toed off my shoes and pulled off my socks, then drew my shirt over my head and skinned out of my jeans. I could feel my cheeks heating up as I undressed, fully aware of Thomas’s eyes on me. Finally I sat nearly naked on the couch, and Thomas stood before me fully clothed.

Then our positions were reversed. I got to watch as Thomas tugged his shirt off and tossed it to the floor carelessly, then unbuckled his belt and slid the tight jeans from his legs. I swallowed as his pale skin was exposed to my gaze, but the burn marks starkly visible on his sides and back kept me from deriving any pleasure from the sight.

“Should we treat these?” I asked him, reaching out so that my fingers hovered over the burns without touching them.

“No need.” Thomas lowered himself to the couch next to me. “They’ll heal.” He turned to me, grey eyes luminous in the dying firelight, and whispered, “Lie down.”

I did what he asked. The couch was much too short to hold all of me, and I ended up with one knee bent up and the other leg hanging off the edge awkwardly. I looked up at Thomas from where I lay. His eyes swept over me, wonder in his gaze. “Beautiful,” Thomas murmured.

I shifted awkwardly, fidgeting with a corner of the pillow to resist the urge to cover my scars. “You’re one to talk.”

His eyes flicked to my face briefly, then back over my body. Thomas reached out and touched my chest, then slowly drew his fingers down. I shivered under his touch. “The Hunger makes me this way,” Thomas said. “It took away my scars and birthmarks when it changed me. Like supernatural Photoshop.” I let out a startled laugh, and a soft smile touched his lips in answer. I felt him trace over a scar on my belly with his fingertips, and I shivered. “Beautiful,” he said again.

I felt my cheeks heat up. “Sure,” I said, “if scars are your thing.”

“It’s not about the scars.” Thomas leaned into me, holding himself on one arm and stretching his legs out between mine on the couch. His face hovered inches above my own. I ached to pull him the rest of the way down, but Thomas wasn’t finished yet. “It’s about you,” he whispered reverently, his fingertips tracing patterns over my shoulder. “Everything about you is beautiful.” Then he did close the distance between us, pressing his lips to mine in a quick, chaste kiss. He pulled back, stroking his fingers over my jaw and searching my face with his eyes. “I never thought I’d be allowed to do this.”

“Neither did I,” I replied. I tentatively raised my hand to touch his face. Thomas sighed softly when my fingers brushed over his cheek, and his eyes fell closed for a moment.

Then he opened them and looked away from me. Thomas pulled back from my hand as he leaned over the edge of the couch to retrieve the blanket from where we’d left it, then pulled it up over both of us. I figured the moment had passed.

There was some awkwardness as we tried to get comfortable, getting all the feet and knees and other extremities safely tucked under the blanket’s warmth. Finally I let my head fall back against the pillow and let my eyes fall shut. Thomas was laying half on top of me, his weight comfortable against my chest and shoulder. His head was on the pillow next to mine, his face pressed against my neck. One of my arms was looped around his waist. It was incredible. Just last night I had gone to sleep knowing in my heart that this could never happen. Now I held my brother in my arms. There was still so much to work out between us, but I was certain we could make it work. I wouldn’t allow it to be otherwise.

With that thought in mind, I closed my eyes and let my body relax. The fire in the hearth had burned itself to coals by now, leaving the room in darkness. It had been a day fraught with danger and worry, and I was exhausted. As Thomas had said, there would be more danger to come tomorrow. I needed my rest.

Yet something kept me from falling asleep.

I could feel tension in Thomas’s body, every muscle stretched taut even lying down. His apparent nervousness was infectious, and I found myself tensing up in response. I had seen him sleeping sprawled on my couch enough times to know that this wasn’t some weird vampire thing, sleeping without relaxing. Something was wrong.

“Thomas?” I whispered.

“What?”

“Don't give me that. What's eating you?”

Silence stretched between us. For a moment I thought he wouldn't answer. Then, in the cover of the darkness, with just the two of us there to hear, Thomas confessed, “I don’t think I could ever give you what you want.”

“That’s for me to decide, isn’t it? What I want?”

“So you _want_ to be with someone who could kill you?” Thomas asked, his voice bitter.

I hesitated, unsure of what to say. Thomas started to pull away from me. I grabbed his shoulder. It was a purely instinctive act, and it told me everything I needed to know to answer his question. The thought of living without Thomas was scarier than the risks of living with him.

“I want _you_ ,” I replied. “I want Thomas.”

He stopped pulling away, but he didn’t move back either. “You can’t separate the two, Harry.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “I want you. If that’s a part of you, then I want that, too.”

“Stubborn, Harry.” His tone was resigned, chiding, but I somehow got the impression that he was relieved I hadn’t let him go. It would have hurt him just as much as it would me. Maybe more.

I forced cheer into my voice. “You know it.”

Thomas was quiet for several moments, then shifted closer to lay against me once more. “This won’t work. It can’t.”

“Yes it will,” I said. “You know me. I’m too damn stubborn to let it fail.”

He huffed, a warm puff of air against the side of my neck. I couldn’t see it, but I thought he was smiling.

“Go to sleep,” I told him. “We can keep arguing about it in the morning.”

Thomas breathed a heavy sigh against my shoulder, and I felt some of the tension leave his body. I wound my arm around his waist and pulled him close. After a moment, he responded in kind. I smiled. After so long, the feeling of a warm body curled up against me was unfamiliar, but by no means unwelcome. It felt almost surreal, to know that I was holding this man in my arms at long last. It was worlds away from where I had been last night.

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

I woke up alone on the couch. All things considered, I wasn’t really surprised by that. Thomas wasn’t a cuddler, and even if things had gone well towards the end last night, I knew that much between us remained unresolved. At least I could take comfort in the fact that Thomas hadn’t snuck out of the apartment to avoid facing me the morning after- I could hear movement in my kitchen and smell bacon frying, and I rather doubted Taylor was the sort to make herself at home like that.

I didn’t get up immediately. I knew that when I did I would have to face Thomas, and in spite of myself I was afraid. I was afraid that Thomas would brush away my hand if I tried to touch him, and say in that calm, reasonable tone of his that everything that had passed between us last night was a mistake. I was afraid Thomas would not acknowledge that anything had changed at all, because he refused to expose me to the risks a relationship between us would bring. I didn’t know how I could respond to that. As desperately as I needed Thomas, I didn’t have it in me to force him into a relationship he didn’t want. Even if I knew he was denying his own desires.

A wet doggie nose in my eye and a stripe of doggie spit over my face broke my line of thought. I sputtered and shoved Mouse’s head away. “Gross! What gives, fur face?” My dog backed away from the couch, tail wagging and mouth dropped open in a grin. I sat up with a groan and use a corner of the blanket to wipe my face. His mission accomplished, my meddling dog trotted back into the kitchen with his tail held high. I glared sullenly after him.

In the kitchen, Thomas rewarded Mouse with a strip of bacon from the plate by the stove. “Don’t feed him that,” I complained. “I left my gas mask in the car.” Thomas glanced at me, a little smirk on his face, then patted the dog again and turned back to the stove.

I heard a derisive snort from surprisingly nearby, and turned my head to see Taylor sitting in the easy chair a few feet away. She had a box of Froot Loops in her lap and, judging by the cereal clamped in her fist, had been eating it by the handful. I was suddenly very aware that I was missing my shirt. And my pants. I grabbed the blanket from where it had fallen on the couch and wrapped it around myself. When I snuck a glance at Taylor, her expression was highly amused, and rather disconcerting.

I turned my attention to Thomas in the kitchen. “Any word yet?” I asked.

“None,” my brother answered. “I would have woken you if there were.” He scooped another few strips of bacon from the pan, then turned off the stove. “Breakfast is ready, if you’re hungry.”

“Give me a minute.”

I stood up from the couch, Thomas’s blanket still wrapped around my shoulders, and slunk off to my bedroom to get dressed away from prying eyes. Just before the door closed behind me I heard Thomas say, “Don’t mind him; he’s a little shy.”

In the safety of my bedroom, I breathed a sigh of relief and annoyance and let the blanket drop. I had been worried about what I would say to Thomas, but it looked like it would be a while before we actually got the chance to talk. I grabbed some clothes from my closet and dressed quickly, then went back out to make sure there hadn’t been any bloodshed in my living room.

When I stepped out and got a look around the room, it was immediately apparent why Taylor had been sitting in my easy chair. It was, in point of fact, the farthest spot from the kitchen –and therefore from Thomas- where a person could sit comfortably. She had her knees drawn up to her chest like a shield, and I noticed with some surprise that she’d gotten ahold of Thomas’s cavalry saber and was holding it in her lap. My brother, for his part, was standing at the opening of the kitchen alcove, leaning his hip against the counter while he ate from the plate in his hand. The two regarded one another from across the room, Taylor with undisguised suspicion and Thomas with evident amusement.

I shook my head. “At least you two didn’t kill each other while I was sleeping. That would’ve been a worse wake-up call than dog breath.”

Thomas smirked at me while I slipped past him into the kitchen. There was a plate of eggs and bacon waiting by the stove, along with a fork, a glass of orange juice, and two pills. I skipped the painkiller, since I needed to be sharp, but tossed back the antibiotic and downed the OJ. Then I picked up the plate and glanced around. “You didn’t make any for her?”

“I offered,” Thomas replied. “She refused to eat my cooking. Said I might try to poison her. Though I’d have to get pretty creative to poison fried eggs.” I glanced over at Taylor. She stuffed another handful of Froot Loops into her mouth and fingered the handle of the saber.

“You might have been in danger when he first moved in,” I told her, “but his cooking has improved a lot since then. Now he only gives me food poisoning once a month.” Taylor snorted again. Thomas reached over and jabbed me in the side with his fork.

“That was one time, Harry. One time.”

“Oh, you two are funny,” Taylor said from the chair. She didn’t sound like she found us funny at all. “Real cute.” She frowned at me. “Don’t you realize how dangerous it is to have him around? Vampires like to play civilized, but inside they’re just as evil and bloodthirsty as everything else. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that thing,” she gestured at Thomas with his saber, “is loyal to you. You just happen to be a convenient pawn for the time being. He’s working some White Court angle of his own.”

I saw Thomas’s knuckles turn white where he was gripping the edge of the counter, and wondered briefly if it might crack. Then I realized that I had a death grip on the side of my plate, too. Hearing the girl condemn my brother pissed me off. Thomas already doubted himself. He already half-believed that having a monster inside of him made him a monster, too. He didn’t need or deserve to have those accusations thrown at him by a girl who knew nothing of who he was.

I reached out to lay a hand on my brother’s shoulder and opened my mouth to defend him, but before I could do either Thomas spoke. “Not this vampire,” he said. His tone with light, but his eyes were hard. “I’ve been ousted from the White Court. I’m a free agent.”

Taylor frowned. “And you align yourself with the White Council, do you?”

“Of course not.” Thomas’s lip curled in a sneer. “The Council at large would sooner lop off my head than work with me. I’ve aligned myself with Harry alone.”

Taylor didn’t respond. She looked between the two of us, her expression growing progressively less angry and more thoughtful. Finally she dropped her eyes back to the Froot Loops box. “If you’re going to align yourself with someone,” she mumbled, “I suppose he’s a good choice.”

Thomas turned to me, eyebrows arched in amusement. “I think that was almost a compliment.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t for you,” Taylor growled. “I just meant, as White Council goes, he’s almost half-way decent.”

“Wow,” I said. “That was almost half-way a compliment.”

“Whatever.” She scowled at me and shoved more cereal into her mouth, which she chewed and swallowed with more violence than was necessary. “What are we waiting for, anyway? When are we going to get those kids back?”

Thomas and I exchanged a glance of exasperation. My brother gave a slight shrug, which I took to mean, “You brought her in on this; you handle her.” I rolled my eyes at him to say, “Thanks for nothing.” Taylor watched the exchange from her chair in wary silence.

“We are waiting,” I told her, “for Camden to cross back over from the Nevernever. As soon as he does, we’ll get word of it. Once we know where to strike, we’ll move.”

Taylor regarded me with narrowed eyes. “And how exactly will we know?”

“You aren’t the only one with faeries on retainer,” I said. “All the Little Folk in Chicago are out looking for him.”

Taylor gave me a flat look. “You’re leaving this up to a bunch of pixies.” She shook her head. “We’re doomed.”

I frowned. “I’ve placed bigger bets on the Little Folk in the past, and they’ve always pulled through. If you have any better suggestions, I’d love to hear them.” Taylor pursed her lips and turned her glower on the cabinet next to my head. “You were the one who never asked about what Camden planned to do or where,” I went on. “If we had some idea of what he intended, we wouldn’t have to wait around like this.”

Taylor dropped her eyes and looked sullenly down at her cereal box. “I know that,” she mumbled. “Don’t you think I’d tell you everything if I could?”

I set my plate down on the counter and went over to the girl. Taylor watched me like a cornered stray as I approached, but she didn’t flinch when I put my hand on her shoulder in a gesture I hoped was encouraging. “I do,” I assured her. “And believe me, if I had a better way, I’d use it. This is all I’ve got. It’ll just have to be enough.”

That would’ve been a perfect time for Toot to come streaking in in a flurry of lilac sparks, declaring in a voice made shriller by excitement that they’d found the blackguard, by God, and were ready to lead the charge. Unfortunately, in real life things don’t happen so conveniently. We passed several tense and tedious hours in my apartment, none of us daring to leave for fear of missing the call. Murphy, who must have been dancing with anticipation, rang no less than six times, even though she probably had a stack of cases on her desk. In the end, it was early evening and just after I’d dropped my pants in the bathroom that Toot made his dramatic appearance.

“My Lord!” he cried, zooming around my head while brandishing a plastic cocktail sword. I pulled my pants up hastily. “The scouts have returned with news of the hunted rapscallion! He makes his wicked lair among the large buildings near the water! Many mortal children he has with him, and artifacts of great power too!”

“Good work, Toot,” I said, not bothering to ask how he’d gotten past my wards. It was a question for another day.

“Thank you, My Lord!” the little pixie cried, saluting sharply. He flitted in eager circles around my ears as I moved around the apartment, first collecting my weapons and duster from the bedroom, then going out to the living room to collect my companions. I glanced at Thomas and saw him frown as he took note of my ride along. Without speaking he crossed over the kitchen and picked up the phone, I assumed to call Murphy.

Taylor had been reading one of my worn paperbacks when I entered, but the moment Thomas moved her eyes shot up. She glanced at him and then at me. Her eyes went wide when she noticed the pixie buzzing about. Taylor bounded up out of the easy chair, flourishing Thomas’s saber before her and sending the forgotten book tumbling to the floor. Toot, not to be outdone, streaked away from me to brandish his miniature sword before Taylor. It looked like the little guy was spoiling for a fight, but Taylor wasn’t paying him any mind. “Where are we headed?” she asked me, her voice strained.

I looked to the little faerie. “Toot?”

He reluctantly left off provoking Taylor and flitted back to me. “By the water, My Lord! Near the bright lights and big boats!”

I tried not to let my exasperation show. “Can you be any more specific? What part of the water, or what landmarks are nearby?”

“There is a doughnut shop nearby!” Toot showed his approval for the location with a series of speedy figure-8s.

“This is useless!” Taylor growled. For a moment I feared she might take a swipe at Toot with the saber, something that would probably have ended worse for her than him. I’d seen what he could do with the box cutter strapped to his back.

I laid a hand on Taylor’s arm, but she jerked away. “Easy, there,” I said. “I didn’t expect him to tell us where Camden is. I expected him to show us.” I turned to Thomas, who was hanging up the phone. “Murphy?”

“At the station,” Thomas answered, “but she’s ready to go. We can swing by and pick her up, then start following the faeries.” Even as he spoke my brother crossed the room, ignoring Taylor when she backed away and held the saber in front of her. He opened the top of his steamer trunk, dug around for a moment, then pulled out a large gun. I was fairly certain it was an automatic, so I didn’t ask where it had come from. Better I didn’t know.

When we made for the door, Mouse followed. I took his leash from the hook by the door and clipped it to his collar, ignoring Taylor’s skeptical look. I hadn’t brought Mouse to Edwards’ place because I didn’t want people asking questions, but I had no such issues now. Going up against an enemy of unknown power with several hostages, I wanted all the backup I could get.

We piled into the Blue Beetle, Thomas and me in the front and Taylor and Mouse in the back. Toot installed himself on top of the gearshift. There was a brief scuffle when Thomas demanded his saber back and Taylor refused, which had to be put on hold when one of my elderly neighbors came out and all weapon-shaped things were thrown to the floorboards out of sight. As soon as the coast was clear they both lunged for the sword. Taylor grabbed if first, but in her eagerness she seized the blade, and Thomas got hold of the handle. Taylor had to give it up or risk slicing open her hand. She sat back in her seat with a huff and I rolled my eyes and started the engine.

There was a terse silence in the Beetle at we drove, broken only by the clunky roar of the engine and Mouse’s loud panting. Then Taylor spoke. “Murphy is the cop from before?”

I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Taylor glaring out the window, her arms crossed over her chest. “That’s right,” I said.

“She was at the mansion, too,” Taylor mused. “A cop who fights faeries and works with wizards and vampires. What’s her story, exactly?” Taylor’s sharp eyes met mine in the mirror. I considered what to tell her.

“Murphy runs a unit called Special Investigations,” I explained. “They handle things other people can’t make sense of. Come up with believable lies to tell the brass, while they fight warlocks and werewolves. Any crime in Chicago with a magical element ends up on her desk- and by extension, mine.”

Taylor huffed and turned her head away. “Just our luck,” she mumbled, “we had to work in the one city with a perceptive warden and a halfway competent police force.”

“What about me?” Thomas asked, twisting in his seat to look at her.

Taylor snorted and rolled her eyes. “And a freelance vampire afflicted with altruism.”

“Better.” Thomas settled back into his seat.

“If you hadn’t been caught,” I said quietly, “he’d have sacrificed all of those kids, and you never would have known in time to stop it.”

I saw Taylor grit her teeth through the rearview mirror. She took a deep breath, then some of the tension eased from the lines of her body. “Maybe it’s not such a bad thing we ended up in Chicago.”

“No. This way he can’t manipulate you anymore. And just to be clear,” I added, “I’m the freelancer, not Thomas. He doesn’t get paid.” In the seat next to mine, my brother rolled his eyes.

“Are you getting _paid_ to stop Camden?” Taylor asked incredulously.

“I’m getting paid to solve the art museum heist,” I told her. “I’m throwing the evil mastermind in for free, since I’m such a nice guy. Speaking of which, I’ve been wondering: why did you use the fake Way instead of the Fells for the museum job?”

Taylor was silent for a while, staring out the window with her brow furrowed. Then she huffed out a bitter sort of laugh. “Camden told me not to take any jobs around Chicago, but someone offered me a good price to steal it. I used the link so Camden wouldn’t know I’d disobeyed him.”

I watched her for a moment as she gazed sullenly out the window, then asked, “What did you do with the ugly sculpture, anyway?”

She met my eyes in the mirror briefly, then crossed her arms and stared out the window once more. “Not telling.” The conversation ended there.

We got to the police station in record time, mostly by ignoring posted speed limits. Murphy was waiting for us outside. She’d brought with her a dashboard light, the kind unmarked police cars use when they need to move fast. Thomas slapped it on the dash and fired it up, and we peeled out of the parking lot.

It was close quarters in the Beetle, and Mouse is no lap dog. He had to spread himself out on the floor in order for Murphy and Taylor to sit comfortably. Even then, I noticed Murphy looked a little uneasy. The incident with the Loup-garou had left her shy of large dogs, and although she knew Mouse wouldn’t harm her he still made her nervous.

Another passenger had joined us at the stationhouse, but she wasn’t taking up much room at all. She was one of Toot’s kin, a tiny thing maybe two inches tall. She stood with Toot just above the steering wheel, which made it kind of hard to see the road. “My Lord,” Toot told me, “this is Candida, who will lead you to the man you seek. Of all our number, she has the best understanding of the humans’ roadways.”

“Great. Do you think you could sit somewhere not between my eyes and the road?” Toot resumed his place on the gearshift, and Candida sat on top of the rearview mirror. She pointed left or right with little toothpick arms whenever she wanted me to make a turn. Unfortunately, most of the time she didn’t signal until I was halfway through an intersection. On one occasion I narrowly missed turning into oncoming traffic, and was only saved when Thomas grabbed the wheel and pulled it hard to the right. It was right in front of a speed trap, too. If we hadn’t had the dashboard light going, I was sure we would’ve been taken in.

While Thomas and I were doing our best to keep up with our pixie navigator, Murphy and Taylor were gearing up for the fight. Murphy had left her duty weapon at the office, opting instead for a boxy little automatic that she now pulled from the black backpack she’d confiscated from Taylor. (I considered commenting on the questionable legality of the weapon, but thought better of it. She was, after all, holding a gun.) Murphy pulled a flack vest from the backpack too, then passed the bag to Taylor. The girl pawed through it impatiently, probably checking that everything was there. Finally she pulled out a metal bracelet engraved with runes and slid it over her hand. It clacked against the cold metal of the thorn manacle. Murphy drew a key from her pocket and used it to unlock the cuff. If Taylor was going to run, this was her chance.

But the girl’s eyes were hard and angry in her pale face. She stared intently out the windshield, facing whatever we were coming to head-on. She wasn’t running anywhere.

Finally Toot signaled to me that we were getting close. Thomas killed the dashboard light and stowed it. We didn’t want to announce ourselves.

I was familiar with the area in principle if not practice: a small bay with a shipping yard and storage facility to one side, and a marina on the other. Most of the boats here, as well as the storage units, were owned by Chicago’s wealthy. Maybe one of them even belonged to Quintin Edwards, erstwhile owner of the ritual knife. CPD suspected that some of the boats here were used to smuggle drugs and other items from Canada. Shipping yard security was paid to keep quiet about what was kept there, as well as to protect it. All in all, it was a perfect place for a magical ritual that couldn’t be disturbed.

The storage facility might have been abandoned, for all the activity we saw within while we drove past. Candida directed us to a parking lot at the part of the bay that reached farthest inland, at the entrances of both the shipping yard and the marina. As desolate as the shipping yard had been, the marina was equally crowded. That side of the parking lot was packed, and I could see people walking to and from cars. There was some kind of waterside nightclub there, and it was in full swing, people crowding around the doors and spilling out onto the docks at back.

That complicated things.

We parked on the empty side of the lot and vacated the Beetle. “How are we going to get in?” Murphy asked. “You can’t blast your way in with people around, and we haven’t got a warrant.”

Trust Murphy to think like a cop at a time like this. “We’ll walk around the far side and go in from there,” I told her. “Candida can show us how to get from the unit from that side. Right?” The tiny fairy made a bobbing motion in the air that approximated a nod. I nodded back. “Right.”

I turned to the storage facility, spotted three cameras at various positions across the front of it, and sent a few measured busts of will towards them with whispers of “Hexus.” For good measure, I sent one at the building at large. If I could short out the security monitors inside, it wouldn’t matter if I missed a camera outside. Sometimes, magic’s tendency to disrupt technology can work in a wizard’s favor.

Two of the slowly panning cameras started jerking erratically, like a pair of horses trying to shake some annoying flies. The third bled white sparks. Then all three went still. “Alright,” I said. “Let’s move.”

Just then, a sleek black limousine pulled in off the street.  I followed it with my eyes as it turned into the nightclub side of the parking lot. Then it circled back and came towards us. My companions watched it warily as it approached. I did too, for somewhat different reasons. I thought I recognized the car.

It pulled to a stop a few feet away from us and a redheaded man with the build of a linebacker stepped out from behind the wheel: Cujo Hendricks, Marcone’s bodyguard. He circled the car to the side door, then opened it and stood back. Gentleman Johnny himself stepped out.

The mood of my little group shifted subtly, but remained highly suspicious.

Marcone looked over each of us in turn: wizard, cop, vampire, thief, faeries, dog. I couldn’t read his expression, but I knew that he would be noticing the weapons we held, and wondering why we’d brought them. Finally his eyes came back to me, meeting mine fearlessly. We had already shared a soulgaze. “Mr. Dresden,” Marcone greeted me.

“John,” I said evenly.

Marcone pursed his lips. He seemed to deliberate for a moment. Then he said, “I heard that you were unable to prevent the theft of Quintin’s artifact the other night.”

I felt my face flush at the comment, but through a valiant effort of will I kept my anger from showing in my face or tone. “I made up for it in the second half, and I’m planning to win in overtime.”

Marcone arched an eyebrow, cool as you please. “Indeed? And is that in some way connected to why you’ve come to one of my clubs armed to the teeth with magical weapons?”

“Nothing to do with your club, John. My business is at the storage facility on the other side of the bay.” I hooked my thumb over my shoulder to illustrate my point. Marcone followed the gesture with his eyes.

“I see. In that case, do take care that your engagement does not spill over onto my property. I would not like to have a repeat of the Varsity incident.”

The Varsity had been another club of Marcone’s. A few years back I used a tracking spell to follow a man who’d assaulted me back to the club. I’d blown the doors off, literally, going in after him. The man in question happened to be another of Marcone’s body guards. He’d taken out a side contract, but neither of us had known that at the time. It had only been uncovered after I’d very violently and very publically confronted Chicago’s biggest mob boss. If I hadn’t taken out a rival drug manufacturer, the one who’d hired Marcone’s thug to roll me, a short time later, Marcone would’ve had to have some regrettable things done to my head, to make sure no one dared to challenge him like that in the future.

“None of us want that,” I said calmly.

“Then we are in agreement on that much, at least.” Marcone’s tone was that of a superior dismissing and underling, which was a bit out of place considering it was he who was getting back into his car. Cujo closed the door behind him and got back behind the wheel. The limousine made a circle around the Beetle and drove off to the other end of the parking lot.

“Who was that guy?” Taylor asked, breaking the silence that had descended as we watched Marcone depart. “He seems dangerous.”

“He is,” I said. I turned away from Marcone’s club and started walking towards the storage facility. After half a second Thomas and Mouse fell in beside me, followed by Murphy and the faeries, and lastly by Taylor.

“You didn’t answer my question,” the girl complained.

“Gentleman Johnny Marcone,” Murphy answered for me. “A mob boss with an understanding of magic, and a friend of the man you robbed the other night.”

“Oh,” Taylor murmured. She cast a suspicious glance over her shoulder, as if she thought he might somehow have identified her and planned to avenge Edwards then and there. Personally I rather doubted Marcone cared enough to act, even if he did work out who she was. “How many people know about magic in this town?” Taylor asked, eyeing Murphy now.

“When the local wizard advertises in the phone book, people with their eyes open take notice,” Thomas supplied. Taylor whipped around to look at me. I guessed she had some thoughts on the sensibility of my advertising strategy, none of which I wanted to hear.

“Never mind Marcone,” I told the group at large. “We’ve got more important things to deal with.”

In silence and darkness we circled the storage facility, pausing every so often so I could hex down the next security camera. There were no gates here, so we would have to go through the chain-link fence, or over its barbed wire overhang. The former was difficult to do quietly, the later difficult to do at all. If would have been simple to send a gout of flames at the fencing to slag the thin strips of metal, but I didn’t want to do something so flashy. The only advantage we knew we had was the element of surprise. 

Speaking of which, “Camden might have some kind of magical surveillance set up,” I murmured. “Toot, Candida, fly through the area between here and the unit he’s working from. Keep an eye out for any surveillance spells, traps, or wards, and then report back to me.”

Toot saluted sharply, and I couldn’t quite see but I thought Candida did the same. The two flew over the fence without difficulty, and their orbs of light disappeared into the depths of the facility.

“That’s all very good,” Murphy said, “but how are _we_ going to get in?

“Working on it,” I muttered. I laid a hand against the fence, curling my fingers around the wire links. A small burst of fire, perhaps, could melt a single wire at a time, if it was hot enough. Similarly, a strong but highly focused blast of force might snap a wire. I was fairly certain that I could have done either- once or twice. Enough times to cut a hole in the fence one link at a time, I wasn’t so sure. I’d improved a lot over the years, but small and focused had never been a strong point. I didn’t know if my concentration and control could last.

“Oh, move _over_.” Taylor pushed at my shoulder. Surprised, I stepped back to give her space to work. Taylor took one of the wires between thumb and forefinger, her lips moving in a spell I couldn’t make out. There was a tiny spark of light and a sound like _snnk_ and when she took her hand away the wire had been neatly severed. She repeated this several times, until a large section of the fence had been cut away from the rest. She was breathing a little harder from the effort, and beads of sweat rolled down her face. When she stood up from cutting the lower links, she wobbled just a bit.

I watched as Taylor tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and forced her breathing to a steadier pace. She was by no means a minor talent, but from what I’d felt when I’d held her arm the other day she wasn’t exactly White Council level either. She probably hadn’t recovered from throwing around all that power two nights ago. The ward I’d laid down would’ve been a big expenditure of energy for me, so I knew it must have taken a big bite of her reserves. On top of that, she’d opened several gates, made the fire illusion twice, thrown up veils and a shield, and done a summoning. She hadn’t had a lot of time to recover.

Taylor was eager for a fight with the master who had betrayed her, but was she really up to it? No matter what she’d done, I didn’t want to drag this girl into a battle that might be the death of her.

But then Toot and Candida were returning, and there wasn’t time to talk. Besides, it wasn’t as though I could send her on her merry way after what she’d done; not with Murphy around at any rate. I needed all the help I could get, so I couldn’t leave one of my other companions to guard her. Cuffing her to something would be ineffective, especially in the face of the skill she’d just shown off, and I wasn’t going to leave her exposed in front of Camden’s safe house by using the thorn manacle. There was no alternative: the girl would have to go in with us.

One by one, we stepped through the hole Taylor had made in the fence. Toot and Candida hovered just inside, waiting for us. When we were all through, Toot made his report. “A circle has been erected around the scoundrel’s lair,” Toot recounted. “It won’t be difficult to break, but he will know when it’s opened. Further in is a more powerful ward that sends bolts of lightning at all who approach. Past that, there are no other defenses.”

I was momentarily cheered by the thought that it wasn’t just my wards that the Little Folk could get past with ease. Then Toot went on. “The human children are confined to one corner of the room. The villain was beginning the ritual when we left. He sacrificed a cat.”

The largest blood magic spells usually begin with lower life-forms, but there wouldn’t be much time before Camden started sacrificing children. We needed to move.

“Good work,” I told Toot. “Lead us to the first circle.” Toot saluted and flew off. We followed after him.

Circles close off the area within to outside magic. They’re not a ward or shield; aggressive spells can still force their way through, especially if there’s a physical component to them like fire. And they can easily be broken by something physical, like a thrown rock or a foot stepping over the line. When the circle is broken, the ambient energy within is released, and begins mixing with the ambient energy of the outside world again. If you’ve been doing any kind of magic within the circle, it’s easy to tell if it’s been broken by the change in the flow of energy. 

And I had no idea how to get past one without breaking it and announcing our presence.

“Stop!” Toot hissed suddenly. “This is the boundary of the circle.” He darted down to my feet to indicate a thin line of white chalk, almost invisible against the concrete ground.

Thomas, who had been walking a little behind me, stepped forward and looked down at the line. He was careful not to let any part of his body hang over it. I had explained to him before how circles worked, as well as some of the basic principles of magic. He knew what would happen if he put a toe over that line. “How are we going to get past that without letting him know we’re here?”

“Let me worry about that.” Taylor stepped up on my other side, casting a surreptitious glance at Thomas. “I can take care of his ward, too.”

I blinked at her. “You can?” I was surprised, and more than a little skeptical. The girl’s lips twisted in a smirk.

“You’re a Warden; you kill things. I’m a thief; I get into places people want to keep me out of. I wouldn’t be much of one if I couldn’t get past a simple circle.”

She reached into her bag then, and pulled out a diamond of black plastic with a ring at one end and a crank handle on the side: a chalk line. “Hold this,” Taylor said, and held the case out to me. I took it. She took the ring and stepped back several paces, unwinding a long length of white cord. While she worked, Toot and Candida hovered on the other side of the chalk circle. I didn’t bother asking how they’d gotten across. I doubted we could use the same methods.

I could guess that Taylor meant to somehow extend the perimeter of Camden’s circle, though I was skeptical as to how and whether it would work. I’d never heard of something like this, and if there were such an obvious design flaw to magical circles, surely the White Council would be aware.

After she’d gone several feet away from me, Taylor started walking back. The cord went slack and fell to the ground. She watched it drag as she walked to the edge of the circle a few feet away from me. Then she set the ring on the ground, bending the cord so that a spot a few inches from the ring was almost in contact with the circle. She took the box from me and repeated the process with the other end of the line, so that the chalk line formed a kind of semi-circle on the ground, like a large growth off the side of the larger circle.

“Everyone inside,” Taylor whispered. Mouse and Murphy, standing on the outside of the bubble, hurried to comply.

From her bag Taylor produced a pair of slender sticks, like the kind used to make shish-kabobs. “The two ends of the line need to touch the circle at the exact same time,” Taylor murmured. “So be still and quiet and let me concentrate.” Taking a stick in each hand, she knelt between the two ends of the line. She stabbed the pointed ends of the sticks into the cord, so that when our bubble joined the circle the sticks would still be inside it, and carefully nudged the cord forward.

I felt it when the line made contact with the circle. It was sort of like passing through a curtain of water, though the sensation was more of pressure than wet or chill. I immediately quested out with my senses and found that we were indeed closed off from the outside world. The main circle had remained intact; it had simply been enlarged to cover the area where we stood, too.

“Right then,” Taylor said, standing up. “Everyone, through this gap here. Don’t get anywhere near the edges of the line.”

Taylor stepped over Camden’s chalk line first. There was no release of magical energies like I would expect when a circle was breached, so I followed after her. One at a time, my companions proceeded through the gap.

“Can you do that to the ward, too?” Thomas asked Taylor. She eyed him for a moment, like she was debating whether or not to answer him, then shrugged.

“Depends on how he’s set it up,” she said, “but he taught me all his tricks, and I know their weak points. However he’s built it, I can take it apart.”

“Can you do it without him feeling it?” I asked. Another shrug.

“Depends,” Taylor said again, “on how it’s built. We may have to move fast once it’s open.”

Toot led us forward, deeper into the storage facility. There were rows and rows of identical buildings, all with rows of big red rolling doors on the sides. It reminded me of those subdivisions that are made up of homes with the same floor plan and same face, only these building might have been made entirely of garages. Every row of doors, every door along the row, looked identical. It would have been very easy to get lost in there. I could only hope that Toot and Candida knew their way.

Finally Toot turned and led us down a row of doors. A few doors down he stopped, and pointed. “The one you seek makes his lair beyond that door, my lord.”

“Good work, Toot,” I murmured. “Stick around; we may need your help getting out again.”

“Call me when you need me, Harry,” Toot said reasonably. “We’ll be at the donut shop nearby.” He and Candida soared into the night sky and disappeared, leaving me feeling oddly like an adolescent relying on a parent to drive him around.

“Do you see it?” Taylor whispered to me.

“See what?” I asked, annoyed.

She made a noise of disgust. “The ward, you fool! Don’t you see what it’s anchored to?”

I frowned and considered the unit Toot had indicated. I held my left hand out towards it, and though I was still several feet away I could feel the power in the ward. That was odd. Normally it was extremely difficult to erect a proper ward without a threshold to anchor it.

Thresholds are a basic component of magic, similar to circles yet different. A threshold forms when a building is made into a home. Houses have stronger thresholds than apartments; ones that have been in a family for years have stronger thresholds than new homes. Thresholds are also strongest when the home is inhabited by a large or loving family. They’re a protective force. Wizards and vampires can’t cross a threshold without being invited, unless we want to leave the bulk of our power at the door. Understandably, most of us don’t.

For spells like wards, the threshold becomes a cornerstone for the spell, the solid foundation that the spell is built upon. If there’s no threshold, it takes a whale of a lot more power to set up a strong ward. The only reason I’d been able to make a sturdy one in Edwards’ home was because I was acting on the invitation of the homeowner. Given the necessity for a threshold when building a ward, it’s nearly impossible to build a strong one over, say, a hotel room. Or a storage unit.

So how had Camden done it?

What it’s anchored to, Taylor had said. Don’t you see what it’s anchored to?

I stepped closer, keeping my left hand before me to sense when the defensive magics activated. As I drew near, I became aware of something visible against the white side of the storage unit, and the grey concrete of the ground. A few steps closer and I could clearly see that it was a length of red string, similar to Taylor’s chalk line. It had been draped over the ground before the unit’s door and over the sides and roof, presumably making a complete ring around the whole of Camden’s unit.

“He’s anchored it with string?” I asked Taylor incredulously.

The girl shook her head. “Not regular string,” she declared. “String soaked in his blood.”

My jaw fell open as I stared at her, but I didn’t care enough to close it. I’d never heard of anything like this. It just didn’t make sense. Everyone with the barest knowledge of magic knowns blood can be used by your enemies to send malevolent spells. Who in their right mind would carry around string soaked in their blood, much less leave it outside a building they obviously thought would attract intruders?

“The blood is dried,” Taylor explained, “so it can’t be used against him.” I closed my mouth. “When he soaks it in his blood he says spells over it. It creates a connection between him and the yarn, sort of the same way a threshold is a connection between a person and their home. Then he can use the yarn to anchor a ward anywhere.”

“I don’t care about how he made it,” Murphy broke in. “I want to know if you can get past it.”

“And more importantly,” Thomas added, “if you can get past it without him knowing about it.”

Taylor considered them both for a moment. Then she nodded. “I should be able to. And it won’t take long,” she added, fielding Murphy’s next question. “But first I need to do one thing.” From her backpack Taylor drew a glass jar filled with translucent pinkish liquid: the second artificial Way, the one that connected to the Fells’ forest. “I can’t open a gate within the ward; Camden would know. I’ll have to do it here.”

I frowned as I watched her lay the jar on the ground and mutter a few words over it. A summoning would have been simpler, and run less risk of being detected, even outside of the ward. But opening a quick, precise gate actually takes less energy than dragging something out of the Nevernever with a summoning, and I knew Taylor didn’t have much energy left. From what I’d seen before, she was fast approaching her limits. It was even possible she’d be running into Camden’s lair magically naked. I could only hope that her army of Fells would protect her as keenly as they had in the past.

The gate opened in the air, a jagged rift with a lot less precision and finesse than her previous gates had had. “Hurry now,” Taylor barked to the beings within, “we’re running out of time!”

That seemed to rouse the Fells. The smallish Fell she’d summoned in the interrogation room stepped out, its nose snuffling and its ears swiveling as it took in its surroundings. Mouse shuffled closer to me and leaned against my leg. His ears were pricked forward and his tail was low and still. I laid a hand on his head. “Easy,” I told him, “they’re on our side.

Another Fell stepped through, then the gate collapsed. Taylor gasped when it released. One of the Fells touched her delicate shoulder with a massive clawed hand. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “Let’s go save those kids.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Two Fells? That’s it?”

Taylor thrust out her jaw and glared at me. “There weren’t a lot of them to begin with,” she said, “and they’re not warriors by nature. Plus _you’ve_ already disabled two of them!”

“Because they attacked me first!” I said. I didn’t like the way the other two Fells eyed me when they heard about their fellows.

“Quiet,” Murphy snapped. She eyed the Fells with mistrust, then looked back to me and Taylor. “We haven’t got time to argue. We need to stop the sacrifice. Can you get us in, or not?”

It was a good question. Taylor was already feeling the physical effects of magical exhaustion- shortness of breath, lightheadedness, and I was willing to bet fatigue, pain, and nausea too. One more spell might prove too much for her. I would rather blow the ward and our cover than let her kill herself trying to breach it silently.

Then again, I wasn’t entirely confidant that I could blow the ward.

“I can do it,” Taylor insisted. “Just let me get some supplies.” She dug through her backpack and produced a spool of off-red yarn, which I was willing to bet had been made the same way as the thread on the ground a few feet away. It looked like she planned to deal with this ward in much the same way she had the circle.

“You can’t tell me you’ve got string with his blood on it,” I said.

“Of course not,” Taylor snapped. “This is made with my blood. I’m not going to extend the ward; I’m going to put a hole in it.”

“And he won’t be able to tell?” Thomas asked.

“Not if I do it right. Now shut up and let me work.”

“Touchy, touchy,” Thomas teased. At Taylor’s glare he held up his hands in an appeasing gesture, and mimed locking his lips with a key.

Taylor unraveled a length of thread, then cut it with her teeth and tied the ends together. She quickly laid it out in a large circle, and gestured for us to get in. We did.

It wasn’t a huge circle, and with the bulk of the two Fells and Mouse on all fours, there wasn’t a lot of space left to stand on. I ended up with my back pressed against one of the Fells’ hairy chest, trying to ignore its hot breath on the back of my neck. Thomas was at my side, his shoulder and arm flush with mine, and Murphy’s back was against my stomach. Taylor didn’t have room to kneel down, so she leaned over Mouse’s broad back to reach down and touch the string. She muttered hasty words in a language I didn’t recognize, and I felt power swirling in the air around us.

It didn’t feel like offensive magic; it wasn’t being gathered to strike against the ward. It also didn’t feel like she was going to pick the threads of power in the ward apart; that was a much more delicate process, and would probably require very different props than the bloody ring. After a few moments I could tell that the spell was weaving power into a precise configuration, like a ward, but at the same time not a ward, or a shield or a circle either. I wasn’t sure what she was doing, and it kind of bothered me.

I’d thought I knew all the fundamental building blocks for spellwork, but Taylor’s brand of magic consistently defied tradition and expectations. It might not have worried me so much if it were just Taylor, but we were about to face down the man who had taught her. What sorts of spells would he use? Would my defenses be able to hold against them? Would my offensive spells do anything at all? In all the fights I’d been in, I’d never doubted that my magic would do what I wanted it to do.

“It’s done,” Taylor announced. Her face was ashen, but set in a portrait of determination. I noticed she was still leaning over Mouse’s shoulders. “Those on the outside, pick the thread up. It won’t matter if your fingers are on the outside; the spell extends beyond the thread.” She reached down and grabbed the thread in her fist to illustrate, then rose to her feet. She kept one hand on Mouse’s back, like she needed something to steady herself.

Murphy knelt down to grab the thread, and I had to press farther back against the Fell to give her room to do it. It didn’t smell particularly bad -sort of like dog and sort of like wet earth and leather- but I felt like it should have reeked. When Murphy lifted the string Thomas and I reached around her to take hold of it as well. The Fells also picked it up in their claws.

Like some bizarre teambuilding exercise, we walked forward inside the ring under Taylor’s direction. When we reached the red string of the ward, the anticipated lightning spell didn’t activate. Moreover, there was no physical resistance whatsoever. I quested out with my senses to see what was going on. I couldn’t get a very good picture, but from what I could sense I inferred that Taylor’s spell was somehow forcing the ward to go around our little pocket of safety, closing behind us and then breaking in front of us, sort of the way a single celled organism consumes food.

When we finally spilled out past the inner boundary of the ward, Taylor dropped the thread and stumbled over it, bracing a hand on the side of the building. Thomas nudged my shoulder with his and said _soto voce_ , “Is she going to be able to fight?”

“She’s running on empty,” I whispered back.

“Is that a no?”

“I’m fine,” Taylor insisted, exhaustion and annoyance fraying her voice. “Let’s just get in there already!”

“Hold on,” I said. “There’s no point in slipping past the wards undetected if we’re just going to blow the doors off. We want to grab the kids and get out as quickly as possible. We can’t risk a big fight that gets them caught in the crossfire.” Especially when I wasn’t sure I could count on my shield against Camden’s magic.

“For all we know, he’s cutting one open right now!” Murphy put her hands on her hips at belt level, one by her badge and the other by her gun. “The faerie said he’d already started the spell; no matter how we go in he’s going to notice if we snatch his sacrifices out from under him.”

She had a point. And coming from her, it was that much sharper. Normally Murphy was the one advising caution, and I was the one who charged ahead blindly. The things I’d seen Taylor do had left me very reluctant to face her master head on.

“Not,” Thomas broke in, “if someone sets up a veil that makes it look like they’re still there.” Veils were not my strong point, and Thomas knew that. He also knew, from the fight at Edwards’ and from my retelling of the incident at the police station, that Taylor made pretty good ones. He eyed her meaningfully when he spoke. She eyed him right back, calculating.

“She’s not up to it,” I insisted before Taylor could say anything at all. She glared at me, but she didn’t try to argue.

“Can _you_ make a veil?” she asked me.

I grimaced, chagrinned. “Not one that will stand up to close inspection like that.”

Taylor considered that for a moment, then nodded with finality. “Then I’ll make sure he doesn’t get the chance to inspect it,” she said. Before I could ask what she meant, Taylor motioned to one of the Fells, and it stepped forward and wrenched up the rolling door of Camden’s lair.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been wanting to start on my next fic for a while, but I can't seem to decide which of several to work on. Since I seem to have some regular readers, I figured I'd ask for your thoughts. (No guarantees on what I'll write though- I'm asking for opinions, not votes!) All of the fic ideas have Harry/Thomas as the endgame. You can read about them in [this post](http://blackat-t7t.tumblr.com/post/145783860430/more-these-are-several-harrythomas-ideas) on my tumblr, and reblog or send an ask if you want to share your thoughts. I have anonymous asks on, so you can still come talk to me even if you don't have a tumblr account.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Please note:** this chapter contains the climactic battle scene, so predictably it also contains some violence and maybe mild gore. I don't think it's worse than anything you'd read in canon.

I threw up a hasty veil around myself, Thomas, Murphy, and Mouse. It was pretty slipshod; probably left a half-image still visible, like a heat shimmer on a road. If Camden had been looking at us, he’d have known something was up.

But Taylor had taken care of that nicely by making herself the center of attention. She strode into the warehouse like she owned the place, a Fell Wolf flanking her on either side. “So,” Taylor said, surveying the small room imperiously, “this is why you wanted me to steal for you.”

The scene was pretty damning. If there had ever been any doubt in Taylor’s mind that Camden intended to murder, surely it was gone now. Her master stood over a stone table roughly the size of a coffin, its white surface stained brown with old blood. At the table’s base, an earthenware bowl caught rivulets of blood that ran down through carved channels. The mutilated body of a mangy cat lay upon the table, and the man standing over it held the bloody obsidian knife.

“Taylor.” Camden was taller than I would have imagined, maybe six-two, six-three. His hair had more grey in it than in Taylor’s police sketch, and his face had more lines. Likely that image was how he’d appeared in her childhood, when she’d gotten her first impression of him. She’d probably never picture him that way again. Doubtless when she thought of him she would always see him as he was now: his features pulled into a frown of dark suspicion, candlelight catching on the blood spatter on his black robes.

“How did you find me here?” Camden asked. His eyes darted around, no doubt looking for anyone who might have led her to him.

Taylor made a motion with one hand. The Fells spread out on either side of her, as though they meant to surround Camden and attack him. His eyes darted to the wolves, then back to Taylor. He didn’t dare take his eyes off her to look around.

“I have my ways,” she replied. “The faerie folk of Chicago are friendly enough, with the right incentive.” She walked further into the room, looking around at the magical equipment laid out on tables along the right wall. The Fells advanced on either side of her. Camden eyed them warily.

All his attention was on Taylor, and we were as close to invisible as we could be. It was as good a chance to move unnoticed as we would ever get. I stepped forward to the edge of the door, Murphy on my right side with her gun ready and Thomas and Mouse on my left. I peered past Taylor and Camden into the gloom of the storage unit. Where were the children?

Then I spotted them, in the far left corner like Toot had described. They were lying on the floor, so still that my heart skipped a beat at the thought that we were too late. Then, belatedly, I realized from the lack of blood that they must be sleeping, either drugged or, more likely, under a spell. Toot had failed to mention that little detail. We would need to change our plan.

“I got arrested, you know,” Taylor went on, her tone falsely casual. “But they had nothing to hold me on, since I’d already given you the knife.” She kept talking, weaving a story that matched Camden’s knowledge of the facts enough that he might, perhaps, have bought that she’d thought the attack was a misunderstanding, and tracked him down to regroup. I motioned for Thomas, Murphy, and Mouse to follow me, and with great care we stepped into the unit.

Taylor was standing on the opposite side of the room from our path, so that Camden’s back was turned to us as we walked. I did my best to muffle the sounds of our breathing and footsteps, but I doubt we’d have gone unnoticed without Taylor monologuing over us. We neared the corner where the children lay, and I saw that there were simply too many of them for us to carry out in one trip. Even if I could break the sleeping spell, their hands and feet were bound with rope; we’d need some time to free them before they could run.

At the other end of the room, Camden had tired of trying to explain away his actions so it seemed like he hadn’t been about to murder a bunch of kids. “Enough of this,” he snapped. “You are a sentimental, softhearted fool. If you had been a little more clever, a little more ruthless, I might have offered you this power, too. But you were careless enough to get caught, and foolish enough to return. This is your undoing.”

He clapped his hands three times, and something under the table behind Taylor moved.

Three large, roughly man-shaped things unfolded themselves and stepped out from beneath the table. They were gray, naked, and sexless, with faces devoid of any features. I’d never seen one before, but I had a good idea what they were. With a word from Camden, the grey substance of their arms shifted and reformed into serrated blades from the elbow down. Another command and they advanced upon Taylor and her Fells, knife-edged arms raised high.

The Fells launched into action, slashing at the creatures with their claws and dodging the swipes of their arms, but there were three of the things and only two Fells. Taylor cried out and staggered back as the third came at her. The stone table brought an abrupt stop to her retreat. She stumbled; grabbed at the table. Her hand slipped in cat’s blood and she fell, cowering. The creature kept coming.

Mouse flung himself from the veil’s concealment and rammed the thing. It toppled and skidded away like a struck nine pin. My dog stood over Taylor, paws planted solidly while she scrabbled as his collar, trying to pull herself to her feet. Mouse growled, a loud, deep, threatening sound like the rumble of an earthquake.

“What are those things?” Thomas asked me.

“Simulacra,” I said. “Magical constructs made to perform simple tasks.”

Murphy raised her boxy little machine gun. “Can they be killed with bullets?”

“I don’t know.”

Murphy turned and fired at the simulacrum Mouse had knocked over. It jerked to the side, the bullet passing clean through it. Clear ectoplasm flowed from the wound. The simulacrum turned its eyeless face to us and started climbing unsteadily to its feet.

“Wouldn’t want it to be too easy,” Thomas drawled. He stood so close I could feel his breath on my neck. It was damned distracting.

I let the veil drop. Our cover was blown anyway, now that Mouse and Murphy had acted, and in a fight I couldn’t afford to spare any concentration to keep it up.

Camden had turned to us when Mouse charged out of the veil, and now that we were revealed his expression twisted into one of fury. He raised a hand and barked a word, and something like a bolt of lightning shot towards us. I threw up my shield on instinct, but I knew it hadn’t been designed to block something like this. As the bolt bore down on us, Thomas threw himself at my side. We crashed to the floor. My shield flickered out. Thomas covered my body with his as the bolt struck the ceiling above our heads and rained hot sparks down upon us.

The moment the threat was gone Thomas rolled off of me, bringing up his gun and firing at Camden. I looked around for Murphy and saw that she was already in the thick of things. She and Mouse were double-teaming a simulacrum, her pumping bullets into it and him snapping at its legs when it dared to reach for her. Its head was misshapen and it was missing half a leg, but it was still moving.

I looked back at the children, to make sure none of them had been injured by Camden’s bolt, and saw something I hadn’t expected: they were moving. Perhaps Camden had been holding the sleep spell and lost control of it once distracted; perhaps with all the noise it just hadn’t been strong enough to keep them under. Either way they were awake now, realizing that they were tied up, that they were surrounded by monsters and people with guns, and that the man they’d trusted was holding a bloody knife. They cowered together in the corner of the room, whimpering and crying and clinging to one another. They were young, so painfully young, with ragged clothes, dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes wide with terror and despair.

I saw that fear and felt the embers of rage that had been sitting in my chest burn to sudden, incandescent fire.

I’d worked a few missing person cases in the past, and no small number of them had been children exactly like these. Black kids go missing all the time in Chicago. It’s not something anyone talks about, and the police never do much about it. I complained about that to Murphy whenever families came to me, but unless there was something strange enough about a case to have it kicked to SI, her hands were tied. And most of the people taking the reports didn’t consider inner-city black kids going missing to be unusual.

I’d once been hired to by a truly desperate family whose missing daughter had been dismissed by the police as a runaway. I’d managed to bring the little girl home in one piece, but it was a near thing. From the looks of it there had been a lot of other kids before her who had disappeared for good, without anyone to look for them. Of all the cases I’ve investigated that didn’t involve the supernatural, that was the only one that really gave me nightmares. Sometimes humans can be just as terrifying as anything that goes bump in the night.

“Harry,” Thomas said in my ear. “You with me?” I blinked; focused on him. My brother was still kneeling over me, using his gun to cover both of us. In between finding targets and squeezing off bullets, he shot me a worried look.

“I’m fine,” I said, “no thanks to you. What’re you trying to do, slamming my head on the floor like that?”

Thomas rolled his eyes. “My bad, next time I’ll give you some warning before I save your life.”

I looked past him, at the kids cowering in the corner. One of the children, a girl who looked about twelve years old, was clutching a boy maybe three years younger to her chest. Her cheeks were stained with tears, but when she saw me looking she pinned me with a glare that seemed to say, “If you want to hurt him, you’ll have to go through me.” Unfortunately for both of them, just about everyone in the room was capable of doing that.

“Look,” I said to Thomas. He fired the gun and then risked a glance over his shoulder, his eyes widening when he saw what I’d seen. Another lightning bolt streaked past bare millimeters from his nose. Without looking, he lifted the gun and shot a spray of bullets across the room.

“We’ve got to finish this before they get hurt in the crossfire,” Thomas growled.

“You get them untied,” I said. “I’ll handle the wizard.”

Thomas glanced at me, then nodded. He dropped the gun to hang by a strap over his shoulder and pulled a knife from his belt. I focused on Camden. My staff lay a few feet away, knocked from my hand in the blast. Even if I’d had it, I didn’t really want to be throwing a lot of force around in an enclosed space. My blasting rod was out too, for the same reason. Fortunately, those weren’t my only weapons.

I glanced around me, trying to calculate how big an area I’d have to cover with my shield to protect everyone. For that the enclosed space actually worked in my favor. I’d end up protecting the simulacra too, but I was willing to bet that with their master dead the constructs wouldn’t put up much of a fight.

I reached into my pocket for a fistful of steel buckshot. I was on the other side of the stone table from Camden, and though it had given me a measure of protection while on the ground, I’d have to get up to return fire. I threw the shot into the air above me before I rose, my sword cane in my right hand and my shield bracelet at the ready on my left. “ _Repulsus_!” I bellowed, and drew up the shield around half the room as the pulse flung the steel balls away.

Camden was ready for me. He drew up a shield even as I spoke, and my buckshot rained uselessly down upon it. Without dropping the shield he growled out another spell, and a ball of swirling green light rushed towards me.

I’d had my counter-spell ready before I’d risen, already thinking three moves ahead. The word was on the tip of my tongue and the work of a split second to roll off. “ _Retextas_!” I barked. A wave of power washed out of me and engulfed the ball. It fizzled into nothing before it reached me. I opened my mouth to fire off another spell, but movement to my side made me pause.

Two of the children had made a break for it, sprinting past Thomas into the thick of things. My brother lunged at one of them, grabbing his shirt and dragging him to the floor. “Dammit, I said stay put!”

I grabbed for the other child but she slipped past me, her eyes wide and terrified. She was running straight for Camden.

“Chloe, no!” Taylor cried. The little girl stopped short, looking from Taylor to Camden. The man didn’t wait for her to make up her mind. He grabbed her from behind, holding the knife to her throat. Behind me I heard the other children gasp and cry out in shock and fear.

“Enough of this,” Camden snarled. “Lay down your weapons or I’ll slit her throat!”

There was a moment of terse silence, the only sound our panting breaths and the children’s quiet sobs. We all knew Camden wouldn’t just let us walk away if we surrendered. But we also knew that someone who’d been about to sacrifice those children wouldn’t need much prompting to slay the girl.

I saw Murphy slowly lay her gun down on the floor, and heard Thomas do the same behind me. I carefully lowered my sword cane to the ground. We all watched Camden expectantly. The little girl in his arms was sobbing freely, struggling against his hold. I saw blood dripping down her neck where the knife had broken her skin. “Good.” Camden turned to his two mostly-functional simulacra. “Kill them all.”

The little girl in his arms screamed. Flames erupted from her skin, raw, untempered magic that scorched Camden’s hands. With a howl of pain and fury he flung the girl away. There was a rush of air behind me and the next thing I knew Thomas’s knife was buried in Camden’s shoulder. My brother dashed forward fast as thinking, grabbing the girl around the waist and dragging her back. Camden fired a lightning bolt at them. Thomas turned and dropped, curling himself around the girl to protect her. The bolt struck his shoulder. His body went rigid, back bowed, and then he crumpled to the floor.

“Thomas!” I cried.

My brother didn’t move.

With my heart hammering in my ears and the edges of my vision going red, I turned back to the wounded Camden. I’d lost my staff and sword cane, but I still had my blasting rod. I drew it from my duster and flung it out. “ _Fuego_!”

A column of flame thicker than a man poured forth from my rod. With apparent difficulty Camden drew together his shield, just in time to keep from being flame broiled. I cried out in wordless fury as the flames were deflected around the room.

“Dresden!” Murphy screamed. “Are you trying to kill us all?”

My head snapped over to her. The flames had streamed off of Camden’s shield and lit the table at the other end of the room. The column of redirected fire blocked the door, the only source of fresh air, and smoke and burning papers billowed through the room. I cut the spell off quickly and willed the airborne flames to die. There was nothing I could do about the ones on the desk. “ _Ventas servitas_ ,” I muttered, and a heavy wind swept through the unit, clearing the air.

I turned to Thomas and saw, to my great relief, that he was struggling to get up. His shirt had been burned away at the shoulder and the skin below was a mass of black and purple bruising, but he was alive. The girl in his arms was weeping, but she appeared to be uninjured. My brother met my eyes and plastered a shaky smirk over his face “Isn’t that a little over dramatic, Harry?”

“You ass,” I said, my voice thick with relief, “I thought you were dead.”

“You all will be shortly.” The muttered threat brought my eyes back to the warlock across the room. Camden had dropped his shield and was gathering power; a lot of it. “Damn the sacrifice- it isn’t worth the trouble!” He held out his hand towards Thomas and I, and the children behind us. He started muttering a spell low under his breath.

Across the room, Taylor threw up her hand. “ _Fulgaris_!” A bolt of red lightning flew from her hand. It seemed to be all the magic the girl had left in her; she stumbled and collapsed to her knees. The spell was weak, but it was enough. Camden had to stop his other spell to raise a shield against it.

One of Taylor’s Fells grabbed her shoulders and hauled her upright. It was bleeding from a few wounds. The other Fell hung back; it was more severely wounded. Clearly Taylor hadn’t been able to shield them the way she had in the past. They weren’t up for this fight, any of them.

Camden dropped his shield once more. “So weak, and yet so stubborn. If you’re that determined to die, my apprentice, I’ll gladly accommodate you.” He raised his hand to Taylor. The girl glared back at him. She knew as well as he did that she couldn’t defend herself.

Something caught Camden’s attention. He quickly redirected his magic, raising the shield again just as Thomas opened fire on him. “She’s a liability like this,” my brother muttered to me. “We need to get her and the kids out of here.”

I nodded and raised my shield again, watching Camden carefully as I picked up my staff and circled to Taylor’s side. He glowered at me from behind his own shield, no doubt planning something I ought to be worried about. Across the room, Murphy had recovered her gun. She and Mouse were working on the two remaining simulacra, but they weren’t getting anywhere fast. Thomas was right; if we wanted to have a chance of winning, we needed to be able to concentrate on Camden, and not worry about his hostages or minions.

“Can you stand?” I asked Taylor. She nodded grimly and pulled herself to her feet on the Fell’s paw. She was a little wobbly, but I thought she had a decent chance of making it. “Can you get back to the car from here?”

Another nod. “I remember the way.”

“Good. You need to take the kids back there. Wait for us; we’ll get you all to a doctor when this is done. But if you think Camden or something he’s summoned is coming after you, you have to run. If you can open a portal, do that. If not,” I thought fast, and realized there was no one better equipped to help her than the one man I didn’t want to rely on. But damned if I would let my pride get in the way of protecting them. “If you can’t, then go to Marcone, the man from the parking lot. He can get you to safety, but it may come at a price.”

“I’ll protect them with my life,” Taylor swore. Her eyes blazed with determinations even through her magic had failed her.

I nodded. “I’m sure you will.”

She glanced behind me. “We can’t get out without going past Camden.”

“Let me worry about that,” I said. I pointed my staff at the opposite wall. I calculated the spell carefully. I had to make the blast powerful while restricting it to a small area; I didn’t want to blow out the corners and risk the roof coming down on us. When I thought I’d gotten it right, I released my will. “ _Forzare_!”

The back wall exploded outward in a cloud of dust and brickwork.

“Get her out of here,” I told the Fell at Taylor’s side. It nodded sharply and nudged the girl’s shoulder, pointing her at the improvised doorway. Taylor moved past me, over to where the children were huddled, and started directing them through the opening. I watched with grim trepidation as they picked their way through the hole one at a time.

I looked to Thomas, who nodded meaningfully to his gun. I saw the pile of shell casings at his feet. He was running out of bullets. The constant barrage on Camden’s shield had prevented the warlock from mounting an offense, but Thomas couldn’t keep that up much longer. I watched the last child climb through the hole and the last Fell follow after him. I let out a quiet breath of relief. Thomas might be running out of bullets, but he’d had enough to cover their escape.

I looked over at Murphy and Mouse. Without the Fells there to aid them, they were struggling against the simulacra. Murphy kept retreating from hers, which was still standing even with its chest looking like Swiss cheese. Mouse was holding one of his front paws up awkwardly, like it was injured. “Help them,” I told Thomas. “Leave him to me.”

Thomas’s gun clicked empty. He tossed it away and drew his saber. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said. He nodded to me and then turned, jumping into the fray with a whirl of his sword and lopping off one of the simulacra’s arms.

“You overestimate your abilities, warden,” Camden said to me. He’d dropped his shield and was gathering power for an aggressive spell once more.

“You know,” I said, “they may have drafted me and given me a cloak, but I still take that as an insult.”

Camden’s lip curled. “Yes, you don’t seem much like one, do you? You don’t have their battle-hardened style.” He took a few steps closer to me.

“I’ve been through my share of battles,” I said. “I took out three necromancers last year. Five, if you count their apprentices. You’re nothing compared to them.”

“Indeed?” He seemed only mildly interested. He probably didn’t believe it, which was just insulting. I’d gone through a lot of grief to be able to say that. “Nevertheless, you’re nothing like the real veterans among the wardens. They’re faster, and more skilled, but most importantly,” he paused and turned to the battle raging on the other side of the room; picked out a target and fired off a bolt of green lightning. I quickly gasped out a counter-spell, but I wasn’t fast enough. I hadn’t expected him to fire off spells in the middle of his monologue. With a sinking feeling I realized that the bolt of lightning was aimed not at Thomas, but at Murphy, who surely wouldn’t survive being hit.

“Most importantly,” Camden gloated, “they don’t get distracted from their enemy by worrying about others.” He raised a hand and fired another bolt straight at me. I hadn’t been ready for that, either.

I didn’t have time to summon up another counter-spell. I threw myself to the ground behind the stone table, my staff falling from my hand, and turned all my attention to the bolt bearing down on Murphy. I threw more will into the counter-spell, goading it on. My spell chased down the bolt, grabbed on and started to unravel it, but it was already too close. I saw Murphy’s eyes go wide when she noticed it.

Then Mouse crashed into her legs and knocked her to the floor. The bolt sailed past Murphy. My spell consumed it before it hit the wall. I breathed a sigh of relief and let my head fall to the floor.

On the other side of the room, I saw one of the simulacra take a swipe at Murphy, just righting herself after the fall. Thomas lunged, caught its bladed arm on his saber. Murphy rolled out of the way, but Thomas’s back was wide open. The second simulacrum stabbed at him from behind. Thomas pivoted, but he couldn’t avoid the blow altogether. The blade bit into his side and I saw his face contort with pain. Then he moved, disengaging his saber from the first simulacrum’s arm, just as the second lunged below it. The second impaled the first, and Thomas flung himself back with one hand over his bloodied side.

I could hear Camden approaching me from the other side of the table. I ground my teeth. It wasn’t just Taylor and the children I needed to protect. If I couldn’t take care of Camden, fast, my friends would be in trouble.

I heard a clink as Camden’s foot struck one of Thomas’s spent bullets. “Come out and face me, warden. Or are you too much of a coward?”

“You wish,” I snarled under my breath. Louder, I added. “Come get me, asshole.” Camden made a tutting noise. He sounded close. I reached behind me, feeling along the ground for my weapons and praying my hands would find the one I needed. My fingers closed around a smooth length of wood and my heart leapt. I rose to a crouch, circling the stone table. I heard Camden’s foot knock into the pile of brass shell casings as he approached.

He was close enough. With my shield bracelet sparking on my left wrist, I leapt to my feet and threw up both hands, bellowing, “ _Adtracto_!”

Camden threw up his own shield in anticipation of my spell. If I’d been aiming at him from the front, it would have worked. Instead, my power acted on the buckshot, bullet slugs, and shell casings that littered the floor behind him. The metal pieces were dragged back through the air, accelerating to the speed of sound. They struck him from behind and tore through his body. Camden’s features twisted in an expression of pain and confusion and hatred, before a metal slug that had struck the back of his head exploded through his face. His shield dissolved and the bullets passed through it. They rained down on my shield, the wet blood on them turning to mist as it came in contact with the barrier. Camden’s bullet-riddled corpse fell to the ground. I dropped the shield.

Across the room, the simulacra went still. Then, all at once, they collapsed into puddles of clear ectoplasm. I looked over at my friends. Thomas flicked a glob of ectoplasm from his sword and sheathed it. He was still holding his side with one hand. Murphy had struggled to her feet. She had the beginnings of a bruise over one side of her face, but besides that she seemed uninjured. Mouse, his tail wagging and one paw still lifted, trotted up to me and shoved his nose into my hand. I patted his head. He sniffed my arm, and I realized that with all that moving around I’d probably opened up my wounds from two nights earlier. I hadn’t escaped unscathed, either.

“We should get out there and check on those kids,” Murphy said.

I looked around the room, at corpse with the knife in its hand and the blood-stained table and the stone tablets amid the burning papers, and I shook my head. “Something else we’ve got to take care of, first.”

I picked up my staff and blasting rod from the floor, and tucked the rod and sword cane into my duster. Then I went to the table in the middle of the room and raised my staff over it. I brought the tip down on the stone table with a mutter of “ _Forzare_.” Power ripped through the stone. It cracked down the middle into two pieces. Red sparks exploded from the cracks. For a moment they raced over the jagged edges and the runes carved into the table’s sides, then slowly they dissipated. The spells laid into the stone had been shattered.

I went around the room, breaking the three rune-inscribed tablets and the blood-filled bowl in turn. The knife I pocketed carefully. I thought it safer to take it with me. I picked up the bigger shards of the tablets and bowl and turned to Thomas. “How much power have you got left?” I asked.

My brother shrugged. “Enough.”

I handed the broken artifacts over to him. “Go to the edge of the bay and throw these as far into the lake as you can. In different directions.”

Thomas nodded. “I’ll get rid of them.” He turned and picked his way through the rubble of the hole I’d blown in the wall. I tuned to Murphy.

“Now we can go.”

She looked over the room, at the body of the warlock and the scorched papers of magical formulae and the broken table and the blood. She looked exhausted. I knew she was probably thinking about what would happen when this was discovered, about who would have to investigate the break-in and the murder. “Shouldn’t we do something about the body at least?”

“Do _you_ want to drag him to the lake?” I asked. Murphy shook her head. “Then we leave him.” She didn’t look happy about it, but I knew she’d understand. “Come on, Murph. We need to get those kids checked out at a hospital. You and me and Taylor, too.”

“And Thomas?” she asked.

I grimaced. “We’ll drop him off outside a club or brothel or something. That’ll do him more good than a hospital full of easy prey.” She watched me for a moment, her eyes searching my face, then she nodded.

Murphy swept her eyes over the room once more. It stank of blood, ash, gunpowder, and dark magic. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. I was only too happy to agree.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taylor's spell in this chapter:
> 
> Fulgaris- a slight bastardization of "fulgur/fulguris", meaning lightning. Another word for lightning, fulmen/fulminis, is more common, but I didn't want Taylor's spell to sound too similar to Elaine's spell fulminaris


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left! Thanks for sticking with me this long. I'll probably have it up by next Sunday, at the latest. 
> 
> on a personal note, I really don't want to put any pressure on anyone who gets anxious about commenting, but if you're feeling up to it I'd really like some feedback on chapter 14. It's the one that I most agonized over and put the most effort into in terms of re-writing and really fighting to keep the boys in character. I don't want this to sound like I'm fishing for compliments, but I guess I kind of am? Writers live for positive comments

Murphy led the way back to the parking lot, since she seemed to have somehow memorized the layout of the storage yard on the way in (really, was I the only one who hadn’t?). When we’d gone back out the hole in the fence and circled around to the parking lot, we found that the Blue Beetle was not parked there alone. Marcone’s sleek black limousine had pulled up alongside it, and the mob boss himself was helping a child into its back seat.

Murphy bristled when she saw it. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, her hand going to the grip of her automatic rifle. I doubted she would actually shoot Marcone, but after the battle we’d been through tempers and nerves were frayed. Murphy was tired, sore, and still riding the adrenaline. She’d be damned if she let someone take those kids whom she thought couldn’t be trusted with them.

Marcone, for his part, looked down at her dispassionately. “I am taking them to one of my private doctors to be examined.”

“Those children are kidnapping victims,” Murphy argued. “They should be kept in police custody.”

“Be reasonable, Lieutenant,” Marcone said. “Do you really want to file a report of a kidnapping that may lead back to what you and Dresden have just been involved in?”

Murphy pursed her lips and eased out of her fighting stance a bit. Marcone was right on that point. Filing a report on the kidnapping would only lead to people trying to track down the kidnapper, and we didn’t want an investigation into Camden or his death.

At the same time, I was sure there had to be a middle ground between interrogating the frightened children for a police report and letting a mob boss take them God-knows-where. When the alternative had meant one of Camden’s monsters hunting down the children and the helpless Taylor, I had trusted that Marcone would keep them safe, for a price. Now that we were here to take over, I didn’t want him anywhere near them. Besides, he couldn’t know the first thing about taking care of kids.

“I kind of doubt you’re a licensed foster parent, John,” I said. “What are you going to do with them after they’ve been patched up?”

Marcone’s mouth twisted oddly. “I’m not a monster, Mr. Dresden; I don’t intend to eat them. From what Miss Lin has told me, these children are in foster care. If they are brought back by the police without reports of kidnapping, they will be branded as runaways. That will only serve to make their lives more difficult.”

I frowned. Marcone was right; kids with a reputation for running off rarely get adopted. I knew that much from my own time in the foster system. But that didn’t answer my question. “What do you care if people think they ran away?”

“I have a great many resources at my disposal,” Marcone continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I will see to it that these children get back to their appointed caregivers, if those people are fit, without Child Protective Services getting involved; and smooth over any disruption caused by their disappearances. In the meantime, I will ensure that they are well looked after.” He turned to Murphy. “You are welcome to check in on them over the next few days to confirm that.”

“Count on it,” Murphy growled. I saw the way she bit her cheek the moment it was out of her mouth. She’d fallen into his verbal trap by agreeing to check in on the kids, instead of forbidding him to leave with them in the first place.

Marcone smiled at her with tepid amusement. “You don’t want to have to answer questions about where these children came from, Lieutenant,” he said. “I am doing you a favor.” Murphy’s jaw clenched. She started to take a step forward, but I grabbed her arm and held her in place. I was suddenly aware of Thomas’s presence at my shoulder, his body tense and his sword drawn. I caught his gaze from the corner of my eye and shook my head minutely.

“And,” Marcone went on, unperturbed, “I will do you another one. Miss Lin has informed me of what occurred inside the storage yard. I can only assume, given Dresden’s involvement, that there has been a great deal of property damage, in addition to at least one messy death.” I tried not to wince at the accurate assumption, but I was pretty sure Marcone could see my embarrassment. He glanced at me and his mouth twitched in the barest hint of a smirk. Then he turned back to Murphy. “I will see to it that the damage is repaired and the body disposed of in such a way that the Chicago police will not investigate. Furthermore, I will ensure that none of the storage yard employees mention anything out of the ordinary happening tonight. Is that agreeable?”

There was no way Murphy liked that plan. Letting someone hide the body of a man she’d had a hand in killing went against everything she stood for. That it was Gentleman Johnny doing it only added to the outrage. Murphy was a cop, and she believed in the law and the justice system. But at the same time, she knew it would be better for all of us –her, me, and the kids- if this all just went away quietly.

“Don’t expect any favors in return,” Murphy said at last.

Marcone nodded agreeably. “Certainly not. I will expect you at my home tomorrow morning to check up on them. I trust you know the address. Until then, Lieutenant.”

“Hold up,” I said. “What about Taylor? She was in police custody. She’s the one who robbed Edwards the other night.”

“That young lady was the thief who so confounded you?” Marcone’s eyebrows rose a fraction. I couldn’t tell if the ignorance was feigned or not, and that irritated and unsettled me. He didn’t appear at all upset with the person who had robbed his supposed friend.

“Miss Lin and her companions seem to have disappeared,” Marcone said placidly. “She did leave a calling card, however.” He reached into a pocket and withdrew a rectangle of cardstock between two fingers. I caught the words “Taylor Lin, Thief” followed by a string of numbers. Murphy glared at me. I shrugged helplessly. Really, what did she want me to do, keep the girl on the battlefield when she was obviously a sitting duck?

Marcone tucked the card back into his pocket and closed the door of the limousine. Presumably the back seat was full. Cujo opened the front passenger door for Marcone and then got behind the wheel. We all watched as the limo pulled out of the parking lot.

It was probably for the best that Taylor had run off. There was no way the police could keep her in custody after she was processed, and I really didn’t want to convene the White Council for a wizard’s trial. There was no telling what they might do once they heard what she’d been involved in. Death wasn’t a suitable punishment for not inquiring too closely into the motives of the man who’d raised her.

I did not mention any of this to Murphy.

Instead I put my hand on her shoulder and said, “Get in the car. Let’s get you to a doctor and have that shiner looked at.”

Murphy jerked out from under my hand. “No need,” she said shortly. “I’ll put some ice on it. Drop me off at the stationhouse. I have a ton of paperwork to catch up on.”

I shook my head, but in the end I drove her there. I told her she should see a doctor when she got that paperwork done. She slammed the door in my face.

I got out of the car. Murphy glared at me, maybe expecting an argument. I held my hands up, palm out, as I circled the Beetle, and when I reached her I pulled her into a hug. Murphy complained for maybe half a second, then returned it with a squeeze tight enough to make my ribs creak. She pulled away without looking at my face and hurried into the building, muttering about all the extra work I’d made for her by killing the warlock instead of letting her arrest him. I didn’t let it get to me. Murphy can be a pain in the ass sometimes, especially when it comes to the law, but that’s because she’s so damned honorable. I can’t fault her for something like that.

Thomas sat silently in the Beetle during my exchange with Murphy, but after she’d disappeared into the stationhouse he got out too. The wound on his side was still oozing pinkish blood, though the mess of bruises on his shoulder had faded from horrifying to mildly impressive. He had expended a lot of energy healing and fighting at super-human intensity. He would need to feed to heal himself, and to recover his reserves. We both knew what that meant.

I offered to drive him somewhere better suited to his needs than a police station, but Thomas insisted he could walk. I wanted to argue, but he fixed me with a flat, hard glare and icy silver eyes. It occurred to me that he might just want to get away from me before he did something that hurt us both. I swallowed down my objections and climbed back into my car. Thomas leaned in through the open door and told me to change the bandages on my arms when I got home, and take some damned painkillers. I told him I could look after myself, and drove off.

The first thing I did when I got home was check out Mouse’s injured leg. He was a friend, and he’d fought bravely at my side; I owed him as much consideration in the aftermath as I did Murphy or Thomas. The leg didn’t feel broken, but there was a gash on it that was still oozing blood. I got out the first aid kit and used a pair of scissors to trim away the thick fur before applying some ointment and a bandage. When I was done Mouse remained seated at my feet. He looked to the pill bottles amid the mess of gauze and bandages on the countertop, then turned his brown eyes on me. He stared at me meaningfully until I got out my pills and downed them. Then he licked my hand and lay down in front of the oven to sleep it off.

I left the first aid kit out on the counter and went to the phone. I planned on patching myself up, eventually. It was just stupid not to. But I had a score to settle first.

So I called in an order for three extra-large pies at Pizza ‘Spress, to be delivered to the roadside near Lake Michigan. Technically Toot and his kin had only earned two for their day’s work, but it never hurts to tip well for a job well done. I’d been betting against the Little Folk’s naturally infinitesimal attention spans, and they’d managed to pull through for me. They deserved a little extra for that.

Just when I’d started to unravel the bandages on one arm, I heard a knock at the door. I frowned. Thomas had a key; he wouldn’t need to knock. For that matter, so did Murphy and Carlos and anyone else who had any business coming over, though they’d probably still knock first just for politeness’ sake. I looked to Mouse to see what he made of it, but he was still sleeping, either unconcerned about the visitor, or too exhausted to notice that something was off. Warily, I approached the door and looked through the peephole.

Nothing.

My home isn’t like my office, with its sign proclaiming me a wizard for hire. I don’t get dingdong-ditchers at the apartment often. So with great care, I opened the door and looked outside.

There was a box on my doorstep. It was small, brown, unmarked. It wasn’t even taped shut, just folded up at the top. I quested out with my senses and found it devoid of magic. That didn’t preclude other malicious contents, like letter bombs, but I thought that a little unlikely. Too unpredictable, with a wizard around. A bomb might have gone off before I’d even gotten the door open.

I bent down and unfolded the top of the box to peek in. For about half a second, I thought some unimaginative troublemaker had left flaming dog shit on my doorstep. Then I realized that I’d seen the thing before. It was in the brochure from the art museum that Murphy had given me: the brainchild of Ms. Zelma Sharp; the sculpture Taylor had stolen.

I picked the box up and climbed the stairs to look around, but predictably I saw no traces of the girl. If she’d veiled herself instead of simply stepping through a gate to the Nevernever, I might have been able to spot her if I opened my Sight. But I thought those slim odds, and not worth it in any case. I had no intentions of hunting her down again; at least not tonight. If Taylor caused trouble in Chicago again, I’d have her behind bars before she could say boo. For tonight, we both deserved a rest.

I finished patching up my arms as well as I could, then stumbled into the living room and lay back on the couch. I figured I’d just rest a bit before packing up the first-aid kit and putting it away. I spent a few minutes debating with myself whether I should drag myself into bed to sleep afterwards, or grab a book from the shelf to read while I waited up for Thomas. In the end, exhaustion and narcotics decided it for me. I fell asleep on the couch.

I didn’t know what time it was when I woke, but from the sunlight streaming through the windows it was at least mid-morning. Mister had curled up over my feet while I slept. Mouse was napping in the kitchenette. I nudged Mister off of me and filled his bowl to make up for it, then checked the bedroom. I wasn’t really expecting Thomas to be there, but I was still disappointed when he wasn’t.

I ate, because I hadn’t last night and I was ravenous. Then I let Mister out for his morning ramble and took Mouse out to do his business. When I got back inside I went to the phone again.

There was a message from Murphy, relating in a curt, clipped tone that she’d been by Marcone’s mansion and half the kids were gone, supposedly back to their foster homes. She’s put in a few calls to confirm and found that the families either had their kids back or were expecting them shortly. Of those that remained, all reported being taken in by Camden following abuse, neglect, or outright abandonment by their foster parents or biological parents. Marcone had brought over a representative with a private adoption agency to look into finding them good homes. Murphy planned to check in on them later.

I erased the message when it was over, wondering if she’d gotten any sleep. I already planned to drop in on her later to return the sculpture, and I resolved to sneak some sleeping potion into her coffee if I suspected she hadn’t slept by the time I arrived. She probably wouldn’t taste the potion through that muck anyhow.

Next I made a call to California. Technically, I should have routed it through the wardens’ switch board for security, but even with everything resolved, I didn’t want to risk getting Ramirez in trouble.

“Carlos the Great and Powerful,” he said when he picked up. I assumed he knew the call hadn’t come through official channels.

“Wasn’t he actually a stage magician, not a wizard?” I asked.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” Ramirez drawled. “I hope you’ve got good news for me, Harry.”

“I have disposed of the Wicked Witch of the East.”

“Dropped a house on her, did you?”

I remembered the building I’d dropped on Taylor’s Fell the first time I’d run into her, and barked out a short laugh. “Not exactly. But the warlock won’t be trying any human sacrifices anytime soon.”

I heard Ramirez breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” he said. “And the thief?”

“In the wind,” I admitted, “but not likely to be a problem in the future; at least not at this scale. She’d been tricked by her master. Once she knew what he was up to, she and her faerie friends helped me take him out.”

“You’re sure of that?” Ramirez sounded politely skeptical.

“I ‘gazed her, Carlos,” I said evenly. “She’s on the level. I can’t promise she won’t be turning faeries loose in art galleries or stealing priceless family heirlooms,” I heard Ramirez’s soft chuckle through the phone line, “but I don’t think she’s going to be stealing anymore magical artifacts. Speaking of which, you don’t have to worry about those, either. I busted them up and tossed them in Lake Michigan. You’d need a scuba team and a gallon of superglue to recover them, and that’s assuming the dark magic hasn’t dissipated for good.”

“Good,” Ramirez sighed. I heard him stifle a yawn. What time was it there? “Knew I could count on you.”

“Next time we meet up, first round’s on you.”

“I won’t welsh on you, Dresden. I’m a man of my word.”

“Uh-huh.” A thought struck me suddenly. “How are things on your side of the country? Any progress on that case you were talking about?”

“I sent someone out to investigate reports of black magic in Utah,” he said. “No word on that yet. We raided a nest of Reds in Vegas the other day, then had some fun on the strip.”

“Lucky bastard,” I muttered. “I’ve been getting my ass kicked by faeries and warlocks, and you’ve been living it up in Vegas.”

“It’s dirty job,” he said, “but someone’s got to do it.”

“That’s not what I was asking about, though. Didn’t you have reports of missing kids?”

“Yeah,” Carlos admitted. “Strangest thing, though. I’d been in contact with the local minor talents who had reported the kids missing, and half of them called me up this morning to say the kids had turned up overnight.” A note of suspicion entered his voice. “You wouldn’t happen to know something about that, would you?”

“If it’s the same kids,” I said, “Random Warlock #295 meant to sacrifice them and absorb their power. I’ve left it to the local mortals to sort out. They should all be home in the next couple of days.”

“The missings aren’t even in your jurisdiction and you’re solving them. Quit stealing my thunder, Dresden.”

I grinned into the phone. The banter felt good, after all the stress I’d been under the past few days. “Not my fault you’re leaving so much slack to pick up.”

“Wait until you’ve got half a dozen reports of warlocks on your desk in a week,” he said, with bitterness that was only half-feigned, “and ten times that on vampires. It’s easy to be a big hero when all you have to do is stop one little old sorcerer once a year.”

“Hey, all of those small timers know better than to come into my territory. If you had a more fearsome reputation, they’d stay away from you, too.”

“My reputation for being gallant and compassionate makes them think I’m a pushover. Couldn’t be farther from the truth, of course, but it’s still better than being thought of as a loose cannon.” His tone was light, so I forgave him. If one of the old guard had called me that, I’d have been insulted. Those guys actually thought I was as liable to go off in their faces as the enemy’s. 

“Well, I’ll let the gallant warden get back to his stacks of paperwork. It sounds thrilling; be sure to watch your blood pressure.”

“Yeah, yeah. At least I see action more often than once a year. Next time business brings me to Chicagoland I’ll buy you and your roommate-not-boyfriend a drink.” Ramirez hung up after that comment, which was probably for the best since it meant he didn’t hear me choking on my tongue as I rushed to deny the implication and then realized I really didn’t want to.

I set the phone back in its cradle, thinking that I’d have to come up with some excuse for not bringing my roommate-slash-boyfriend with me when Ramirez stopped by. He wasn’t a bad guy, and he was one of the few in the Council or the Wardens who didn’t think I was a traitor, but I doubted his understanding would extend to my relationship with a vampire.

I looked towards the door and sighed. I’d taken care of all of the follow-up to the case, and Thomas still wasn’t home. I sort of wanted to call him, but I really didn’t want to interrupt anything. I didn’t think I could handle hearing the voice of his latest conquest in the background when he picked up.

I frowned at the cardboard box sitting by the phone. I could stay home waiting for Thomas, going stir-crazy wondering who was keeping him and were they any good, or I could take the flaming poo sculpture over to the stationhouse and leave it with Murphy. She’d probably be in a sour mood, given Taylor’s disappearance and the whole thing with Marcone, and doubly so if she hadn’t slept since the battle. Even a civil conversation with a sleep-deprived and irritated Lieutenant Murphy was something I’d rather avoid, under normal circumstances.

But these weren’t normal circumstances, and I badly needed something to distract me from thoughts of Thomas and what he was doing right then. Would he go home with people, I wondered, or just rent a hotel room and bring them back there? Or would he skip the bed altogether, and opt for a quickie in the bathroom of a seedy nightclub somewhere? Or even go to one of the clubs designed for that kind of thing, the S&M clubs or the swingers’ clubs, where a person could end up in the middle of an orgy with relative ease? Surely having several partners at once would make it easiest for him to feed.

I shook my head. I really didn’t want to think about Thomas caught up in the press of bodies, dozens of anonymous hands caressing his flawless skin while nameless, faceless individuals offered their bodies for his pleasure or took their pleasure from his. My hands clenched instinctively into fists; I felt a hot flush of jealousy in my chest and face, and a vaguely nauseous feeling in my stomach. No, I didn’t want to think about that.

So maybe I’d pay Murphy a visit, even if she hadn’t slept. Anything to get my mind off of Thomas.

I glanced down at my clothes and grimaced. If I wanted to drop by a police station, it was probably better not to do it wearing clothes that were stained with sprays of a dead man’s blood, and dusty with soot and ash and flecks of stone. Before I could do anything else, I needed to get myself cleaned up.

I stripped and tossed my clothes into the corner of my bedroom that served as a laundry hamper, then walked naked into the bathroom to shower. The icy water pounding on my head and shoulders didn’t do anything for the muscle aches from being thrown around last night, but it felt good to wash the sweat and soot from my body. The gashes on my arms were healing nicely, or at least enough that I could bend my arms to wash myself without a great deal of pain. I discovered bruises I hadn’t noticed before on my arms, shoulders, and hips, probably from falling to the ground dodging lightning bolts. I thought of the burnt, bruised flesh of Thomas’s shoulder when he’d been struck by one shielding the little girl, and wondered how much it had hurt him. Out of morbid curiosity, I pressed down on one of my bruises and let the dull ache assault my senses. I released it with a hiss of pain. I wondered how long it would take before my bruises faded. I was glad that at least Thomas’s pain would fade quickly.

When I’d finished showering and shaving, I wrapped a towel around my waist and walked, dripping, into the empty living room to get a bruise salve from the first-aid kit still sitting out in the kitchen. I smeared it over the darker bruises, then applied some butterfly bandages to my arms, since I didn’t think they really warranted a bandage cast at this stage. I packed up the kit and put it away, then took one of the antibiotic pills, since I figured it was what Thomas would want me to do. While I was there my stomach growled, so I decided to make myself a sandwich. I knew I was probably stalling to avoid going to see Murphy, but I didn’t really feel bad for it. After all, the only reason I was thinking about visiting her was because I needed something to keep my mind off my brother.

I had just finished eating, sitting in my easy chair in nothing but a towel, when I heard the doorknob rattle. I found myself holding my breath as I watched the heavy door swing open. Thomas froze in the doorway when he saw me. Our eyes locked for a moment, then he tore his gaze away and busied himself with closing and locking the door.

Thomas still didn’t look at me even while he walked into the apartment and ducked into the kitchen. I noticed that he’d gotten a new shirt from somewhere, one without the burn hole on the shoulder and the bloody blade cut on the side. His dark curls, hanging loose around his shoulders rather than in the usual ponytail, were damp with water. I glanced to the windows; it wasn’t raining.

“At least you showered before coming home this time,” I muttered, more to myself than to him. Thomas glanced at me from the corner of his eye, then turned his gaze away once more. His shoulders were slumped and his fingers drummed nervously on the countertop. I could read the tension in his posture, like he was expecting accusations or lectures. I’d never liked having to deal with the revolving door of women or the mess they made of my apartment, and Thomas knew that. Now that we’d reached an understanding he probably expected more possessiveness, and more anger.

It was true that I was jealous, a bit. Who wouldn’t be, if the person they’d just started something with was running off with other people? But I could hardly blame Thomas for our situation. If I was angry, it wasn’t directed at him, and I needed him to know that.

“I’m not mad at you,” I told Thomas as he rifled through the cabinets. His hand stilled briefly on a shelf when I spoke, but he kept his back to me. He lowered his hand without taking anything and closed the cabinet door. “I know that you need to feed to heal,” I went on, “and you need to sleep with other people to feed. I understand that. I know it isn’t your fault, and I’m not angry with you.”

I watched Thomas as he stood in the kitchen. His hands were braced on the countertop, unmoving. He still hadn’t turned to face me. He seemed to have forgotten his reason for going into the kitchen, if he’d ever had one besides avoiding me.

“Come sit with me,” I said. For a moment he was still, and I wondered if he would pretend he hadn’t heard me. Then Thomas pushed himself away from the counter and walked into the living room. He sat on the couch next to my chair, and took a moment to tuck his legs up and make himself comfortable. Only then did he raise his eyes to look at me.

I reached out and brushed my fingertips over the shoulder that had been injured, feeling the firm muscle beneath the new shirt. Thomas’s eyes followed my hand. He didn’t wince when I touched him, so I assumed the injury was fully healed. I looked to his face. It took a moment before he lifted his eyes to meet mine. “I’m glad you can heal like this,” I murmured, dropping my eyes as I ran my hand over his chest and down to the place where he’d been stabbed. I could feel his muscles tensing beneath my touch. “I hate thinking that you’ve been hurt in one of my fights.”

“Our fights,” Thomas corrected me.

“If by that you mean the ones I start and then drag you into.”

Thomas shook his head. “When have you ever dragged me into anything?”

I frowned, turning it over in my mind. Finally I had to shrug. I’ve never actually asked for Thomas’s help, much less dragged it out of him. He’d always stepped up as soon as he’d heard I was getting into something. Sometimes even before I’d known I was getting into something.

I wanted to argue more; wanted to say that he got involved because I was involved, and that that was the same thing as getting dragged into it. But Thomas laid his hand over mine on his side, and the thought fled my mind. I watched as he lifted my hand, at first fearing he meant to push it away, then relaxing when he laid it on the arm of the couch and curled his fingers under my palm. I hazarded a glance at his face and found Thomas gazing down at our hands, his brow furrowed like he wanted to speak but was searching for the right words. I could feel my heart starting to speed up while I waited for him to find them.

“It wasn’t just about healing,” Thomas said at last. “I wanted to be certain that the Hunger was satisfied, before I came home to you.” He raised his eyes to meet mine. My breath caught in my throat; I could read in his eyes and in the space between his words the things he hadn’t said.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I looked to his neck, where even after a day’s time and extensive feeding the red mark of my lips was faintly visible. “I burned you last night.”

“My control was shaky,” Thomas said, denying me any responsibility for his injuries. “It won’t be, now.”

I swallowed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want it; I did, desperately. But I hadn’t expected him to want it, after the things he’d said last night. He’d been so certain he’d somehow manipulated me, and so afraid of losing control. When had he decided that none of that mattered?

“I thought you weren’t sure about,” I gestured between us with the hand he wasn’t holding, “this. Us.”

“I have a lot of doubts,” Thomas admitted, “about whether this is in your best interests. But you don’t.” He met my gaze again, his grey eyes solemn. “Tell me to stay and I’ll stay. Tell me to go, and I’ll go. It’s that simple, Harry.”

I drew in a shaky breath, suddenly feeling like my chest was too tight. I turned my hand under Thomas’s to take hold of his fingers, then drew his hand to my mouth and pressed a kiss against it. “I don’t want to make you to do something you don’t want to do.”

Thomas’s eyes softened; a little smile pulled at his lips. “You haven’t. You’ve just given me permission to have something I would have denied myself.”

I laughed then, shaky and overjoyed and relieved. Then I put my hand on Thomas’s arm and pulled him towards me. He came willingly, a smile on his face as he rose from the couch and settled over my lap in the easy chair. Genuine smiles from Thomas were a rare thing, and I thrilled at seeing it on his face and knowing I had caused it.

Moments later the smile was gone as Thomas’s mouth pressed against mine, soft and warm and sinfully sweet. It was gentle at first, then growing in urgency, like he needed to taste me more than he needed to breathe. I couldn’t help but wonder how many people he’d kissed since I’d last seen him, and if he’d kissed them half as desperately as he did me.

Then Thomas’s hand came up to my face, fingertips on my cheek and neck while his thumb brushed the corner of my mouth, and I knew he never kissed any of them like _that_. That tender, treasuring touch could not be something he bestowed upon the strangers he slept with out of necessity.

I put my own hand on the side of his face, then slid it back into his hair and used it to pull him closer. Thomas made an appreciative noise in his throat. I smiled into the kiss and slid my other hand over his hip and then under the back of his shirt to skim over the smooth skin there. Thomas arched into my touch and reached out to touch my bare chest, his fingertips tracing gently over my scars.

We broke apart for air, both of us panting. I caught sight of his eyes, half-closed and hazy with lust, but clearly a striking blue rather than the usual grey. They were beautiful. Every part of him was beautiful, and I desperately needed to see more. I grabbed the fabric of his shirt with both hands, bunching it up as I tried to pull it off of him. Thomas helped me draw it up and over his head, then tossed it carelessly to the floor.

I drew in a sharp breath as I took in the uncovered skin, the hard muscle. I’d seen him shirtless a hundred times, but I’d never been allowed to appreciate it like this. His pentacle amulet, a twin of my own, lay gleaming upon his chest, silver metal and black cord making a striking contrast to pale skin. I lifted a hand to brush over the smooth metal, then let my fingers trail slowly downward.

When I reached the top of his pants I placed both hands over his hips, running my thumbs over the bones there and feeling how he rocked into me.  Then I moved my hands up, over his sides and his chest. There were still red marks on his sides from when his control had lapsed the last time we’d done this, but other than that the skin was smooth and perfect beneath my palms.

When my hands reached his shoulders I lifted my eyes from his chest to his face. Thomas’s kiss-reddened lips were parted, his pupils blown wide in hazy, dark blue eyes. “Let’s take this to the bedroom,” Thomas said, his voice low and rough with need. I swallowed and nodded, unable to make myself speak.

Thomas slipped off of my lap and held out a hand to me. I took it and let him pull me to my feet. My towel fell to the floor as I stood. I half thought of bending down to get it, for modesty’s sake, but Thomas was already pulling me towards the bedroom. His eyes swept over my body appreciatively, dark with promises of pleasures to come. I followed eagerly after him.

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally posting this last chapter! This is it for now, I hope you've enjoyed the story. 
> 
> I've finally started on my next fic (I wanted to be able to say that when posting this chapter; that's the only thing that's been holding it up). It's another Harry/Thomas fic, a pre-series canon AU where they meet as teenagers. I'm not going to start posting chapters until I've got it completely finished, so it may be quite a while before you see any of it. If you want to ask about my progress or chat about this fic or that one, feel free to drop me a line over on [my Tumblr](http://blackat-t7t.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> And last but not least, if you enjoyed this fic, please consider leaving a comment or reblogging [this post](http://blackat-t7t.tumblr.com/post/146529560060/blood-magic-complete) on tumblr to share it! (No pressure tho)

When we got into the bedroom Thomas pushed me down on the edge of the bed. The tented fabric of his jeans was level with my face, and I swallowed. I wasn’t sure what to do, how to start. I suddenly felt very exposed, both figuratively and literally. I bowed my head, looking at the floor to my side, and fisted my hands in the sheets to resist covering myself out of embarrassment.

I heard Thomas’s soft chuckle and risked a glance at him. His eyes raked over my body, his expression one of appreciation and raw desire. My heart sped up. His eyes stopped on my face, meeting mine with a burning intensity. “Beautiful, Harry.”

I flushed and let my eyes drop again, over his smooth chest and down to the pants he still wore. I wanted desperately to touch him, yet I hesitated. I felt somehow that if I did so I would break whatever fragile magic had brought us together; that I couldn’t possibly be allowed to have him as a brother and a lover, and that I would ruin everything the second I laid my hands on him in a less than brotherly way.

A light touch on my shoulder made me jump. I glanced at Thomas’s fingers as they skimmed down my arm, then tried to meet his eyes. He didn’t look at me. Instead Thomas watched the single point of contact between us as his fingers ran down past my elbow to my hand. He took it in his and lifted it from the bed, laid my hand over his waistband at the fly of his jeans. I looked up at his face again, and he smirked. “It doesn’t bite, Harry.”

I let out a soft laugh of surprise and shook my head at him, smiling. Thomas flashed me a dazzlingly white grin in return. His hand fell from mine, leaving it resting over the button of his pants. I sobered and looked up at him once more, asking permission without words. Thomas nodded to me.

Feeling a little more confident, I lifted my other hand to start to undo the button. Then I thought better of it and shifted that hand to his hip while I moved my right lower, palming him through the fabric. A little thrill ran through me; I’d never done this before, and never dared to believe that I could do it with him.

Thomas made a soft noise of encouragement and rocked his hips forward into my hand. I could feel the hard outline of his erection through the fabric and I curled my hand around him as much as I could, rubbing over the side with my thumb. Thomas lifted his hands to brace on my shoulders. His head bowed over mine. With my other hand I gripped his hip and urged him forward. Thomas stumbled toward me until his legs hit the mattress between my knees. I leaned into him and pressed my lips against the rippled muscle of his belly. I could feel him quivering beneath my touch.

One of Thomas’s hands came up to the back of my head, holding me there against him. I rubbed him through his jeans, enjoying the way his breath caught and his hips jerked. I knew it would be easy, from this position, to lower my mouth over his length once I’d gotten it free. The thought made my head spin. I could scarcely believe that we were here, now, doing this.

I got my hand up to the fly of his jeans, popped the button and lowered the zipper and slid my hand inside. Thomas groaned as my hand wrapped around him. “Harry,” he whispered, half a plea. I realized rather belatedly that he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

Thomas was hot and hard and velvety soft in my hand, and his breath was coming quick and sharp above me. I tried to breathe evenly as I wrapped my hand around him and gave an experimental stroke. I felt Thomas rock into my grip, heard his soft moan above me, and smiled against his skin as I repeated the motion.

It was hard to touch him like that, with his opened pants still in the way. I quickly got frustrated and shoved them down his pale legs. I had to pull back from him then, to get a good look at him. I’d caught glances before now, when he was coming out of the shower or sleeping on the couch with a date, but I’d never permitted myself to look long, and I’d never seen him like this, aroused and ready. His cock jutted proudly from a nest of neatly-trimmed dark curls, shamelessly hard and already wet at the tip. He was a little longer than me, a little less thick, and I wasn’t an expert but I thought he was uncut. I wondered suddenly what it would feel like to hold him hot and heavy in my mouth, what he would taste like on my tongue.

I settled my hands over his hips, rubbing my thumbs absently over his jutting hip bones. I looked up and met his eyes, and Thomas nodded to me once more. I leaned in, curling the fingers of one hand lightly along his length to guide it to my mouth, and pressed my tongue flat over the tip.

Thomas’s taste exploded over my senses, less bitter than I’d expected and somehow overpowering, intoxicating. I wondered if it had anything to do with him being White Court, then quickly dismissed it as irrelevant. I could feel the way Thomas struggled to suppress the instinctive jerk of his hips; see the way the silver amulet on his chest rose and fell as he drew a shaky breath. I took it as a sign of encouragement. I closed my lips over the tip, sucking lightly and pressing my tongue to the underside. Thomas’s fingers tightened on my shoulder. I suppressed a smile and carefully eased down his length.

It was strange, holding him thick and heavy in my mouth like that, feeling his velvety skin against my lips and tongue and tasting him from the tip of my tongue to the back of my throat. It was strange and unfamiliar, and something I hadn’t realized I wanted until just then, but at the same time it felt so right, especially when Thomas’s hand stroked my hair almost reverently and I heard him mumble, “So good, Harry.” It was good for both of us.

I quickly learned I couldn’t take all of him without choking, but I wrapped my hand around the rest and did my best with what I could take. I tried to recall what I’d enjoyed with other partners and copy that, but I feared my technique left a lot to be desired. I struggled to keep my teeth free, especially on the long strokes, so I kept most of him in my mouth and made little bobbing motions instead. I pressed my tongue to the underside, ran it over the tip, tried to wrap it around all of him and mostly failed. I could feel the fold of his foreskin in my mouth when I stroked my hand up, and slipped my tongue under it on a whim. That made Thomas’s hand tighten in my hair and drew a whimper from his lips, so I repeated the motion, swiping my tongue around the head beneath the loose skin. I heard him gasp out, “Harry,” felt a shudder run through him, and tried not to grin.

I kept experimenting, learning what he responded to and starting to feel like I was getting the hang of it, before Thomas abruptly shoved my shoulder back and forced me to ease off. I started to apologize, fearing I’d done something that hurt, but he shoved me back against the bed with a growl, and the words died on my lips. Thomas climbed over me, settling with his body pressed to mine chest to chest and hips to hips. I could feel his length, slick with my spit, sliding against mine and drawing a shudder from my body.

“Thomas,” I murmured, reaching for him to draw him down into a kiss. He responded eagerly, pressing me to the mattress and kissing me soundly, his tongue delving into my mouth before retreating so he could suck and nibble at my lower lip while I gasped against him. Then he drew back and started trailing open-mouthed kisses and sharp nips over my jaw and down my neck. I could feel the smooth metal of his pentacle amulet between our bodies, dragging against my skin as he moved over me. It should have been awkward, but I reveled in it. It was a symbol of the blood we shared, a bond that went far beyond the bedroom.

Thomas moved down my body, licking a stripe over my collar bone before continuing down my chest. His mouth closed over one of my nipples and I gasped as his tongue flicked it. I’d never thought that was something I would find erotic, but with Thomas somehow it was. He sucked and licked my nipple until it had hardened into a nub, then moved his mouth to the other one and rolled the first between his fingers. I felt my cock twitch as his fingertips rubbed over the sensitive, spit-slicked skin. It was almost ticklish, and the unbearableness of that sensation fed easily into the coil of need in the pit of my stomach.

Almost too soon Thomas was moving down my body again, nipping my flat belly before dipping his tongue into the hollow of my bellybutton. “Thomas!” I yelped, surprised. My brother laughed softly, and I felt it vibrate through my body. Then he was moving down again, nipping at my hip bone and skimming past my throbbing erection to suck a bruise into the thin skin of my inner thigh. Thomas rolled my balls between his fingers and then moved back, pressing his thumb lightly against the skin just behind. I half expected him to move lower, to brush his fingertips over my hole, but he didn’t. Instead his hand trailed back up, and his fingers wrapped around me and stroked torturously slow.

I bucked up into his hand with a needy groan. Thomas laughed softly and quickened his pace to something more bearable. I put one arm behind my head so that I could watch the movement of his hand. Thomas looked up, met my eyes and smirked. Then, without breaking eye contact, he lowered his mouth over my cock. With a strangled moan I closed my eyes, unable to hold his gaze.

“Thomas!” I whimpered. Blindly I reached for him and settled my hand on the back of his head. I curled my fingers in Thomas’s thick hair and felt him moving over me. His mouth was hot, slick, and his tongue pressed against me in ways that must have been calculated to send pleasure ripping through my body. If I hadn’t known he’d pulled the Hunger back as far as he could, I would have wondered if his vampire powers were influencing me, making me feel more. As it was, I knew that it was all Thomas, all his skill and technique.

And what a technique it was; though I confess it wasn’t hard to get to me, then. It had been three years since I’d been with anyone, and in the past two I’d rarely allowed myself to jerk off since it almost invariably led to thoughts of Thomas, and I hadn’t allowed myself to beat off while thinking of my brother. I’d known that I was never going to last long, but with the way Thomas was sucking me I thought I’d blow my load in his mouth in seconds.

I moved my hand to his shoulder, pushing lightly. “Thomas,” I gasped, “stop.”

Thomas backed off, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. He looked to me expectantly. I watched his hand drop from his mouth, revealing lips red and swollen from being wrapped around my cock. I swallowed and focused on his eyes.

“I’m not going to last long,” I admitted, “and I don’t want it to end like this.”

Thomas’s eyes flashed with something I couldn’t identify. He slid up my body until his eyes were level with mine, then leaned into me and dragged his lips up my neck to my ear. His voice was husky when he spoke, his warm breath sending shivers through my body. “How do you want it, Harry?”

I squeezed my eyes shut; gripped his shoulder and took several deep breaths to try to steady myself. “I want you. Thomas.”

“ _How_ do you want me?” I could hear the amusement in his tone. He probably knew exactly what I wanted, but enjoyed making me embarrass myself by saying it out loud.

I turned my head towards Thomas. He tilted his own, letting me bury my flaming face against his neck. “Harry,” he whispered, “what do you want?”

It occurred to me then that maybe it wasn’t about embarrassing me. Maybe Thomas was the type to get off on dirty talk; on someone telling him what they planned to do to him. Maybe he needed me to say it as a way of giving him permission to act, before he would allow himself to do so.

I pressed my face against his neck and mumbled, “I want to fuck you.”

I heard Thomas let out a breath in a sharp, satisfied huff. Then he leaned away from me, fumbling with the drawer of the night stand. I’d kept an infrequently-used bottle of lube and a few condoms there even before he’d arrived, but since then both had disappeared. They had been replaced several times over, sometimes with different flavors of lube or textures of condoms, and once with a lube that made my skin tingle almost painfully when I’d ventured to try it. I’d never said anything about them to Thomas.

Fortunately the bottle Thomas pulled from the drawer now was just regular water-based lube. He tossed it on the bed, then leaned in and whispered into my ear, “How do you want me, Harry?”

Definitely into dirty talk, then.

I swallowed, knowing what I wanted to say but feeling the words stick in my throat. Thomas’s tongue traced over the outside of my ear, and I shivered. “Whatever you want, Harry,” he breathed. “Just ask it and it’s yours.”

I felt some of the tension in my body ease at that. Thomas was just as eager to give me what I wanted as I was to have it, and that made me feel more confident in asking. The embarrassment was fading, and I found myself warming to the idea of voicing my desires.

I took my brother’s shoulders and pressed him back against the bed, settling over him with my arms braced on either side of his head. I leaned in and spoke into his ear, hoping it would drive him as wild as it did me. “Just like this,” I said huskily, and dragged a hand down his chest. “I want to see your face while I fuck you.”

Thomas closed his eyes and moaned. “Empty night, Harry!”

“You like that?” I asked. He didn’t answer with words; just grabbed my hand and drew it to his dick so I could feel just how much he did like it.

I gasped and pulled away from him, settling back so I could look over the whole expanse of his body. Dark blue eyes, kiss-red lips, smooth chest and rippled abs, hard cock and long legs spread apart to give me access to all of him. I glanced at the place between his legs and swallowed, my earlier confidence evaporating.

I had never really bothered to inquire into the exact mechanics of sex between two men. I had no practical experience and, considering I couldn’t be in the same room with a computer without breaking it, there was no way I could discreetly browse the internet for information. I knew what I wanted to do with Thomas, but I wasn’t at all sure how to get there without hurting him.

Thomas seemed to sense the shift in my manner. “Harry?” he asked, tilting his head to look up at me.

I met his eyes, then turned my gaze back over his body. “You may need to walk me through this,” I told him without looking at his face. “I have no idea how to start.”

Thomas took a moment to absorb that, then snorted. “Watch me,” he ordered. Then he grabbed the bottle of lube and squeezed a generous amount over his fingers. Thomas raised his legs and tilted his hips, drawing one leg all the way up to his chest with an arm and bracing the other on the bed. It gave me a good view of his cock and balls and the dusky pink hole below them.

I watched, transfixed, as Thomas rubbed a lube-slicked finger over his entrance. He repeated the motion a few times, and I saw that some of the tension in his body from contorting in the awkward position began to ease. When he was relaxed, Thomas laid one fingertip against his hole and started to press it in.  

I swallowed, feeling my breath come in short gasps as I watched Thomas’s finger disappear into his body. When it was all the way in he withdrew part way and pressed back in. Then he did it again, and again, slowly fucking himself as the movement became easier. He hummed a soft noise of contentment, his features smoothed into an expression of mild pleasure.

While I watched, Thomas added a second finger and began to fuck himself in earnest, his hips rocking back against the intruding digits. His eyes fell closed and small noises of pleasure slipped past his parted lips. He withdrew both fingers, squeezed more lube onto his hand, and then resumed with three instead of two. He pumped the fingers in and out of his body, his breathing going ragged around moans of pleasure. “Harry,” he breathed. “Ah, yes, Harry!”

I felt dizzy with desire. I had to put my hand around the base of my cock and squeeze, or I was sure I would have come from the sight alone. I closed my eyes against it and forced myself to take deep, even breaths, trying to think of extremely un-sexy things.

I could still hear Thomas’s breathing, though, and his half-strangled noises of pleasure. I cracked open one eye to take a peek and saw my brother fucking himself on his fingers while watching me through half-closed eyes. When he noticed me looking he smirked and threw his head back in a moan. My eyes trailed down the arch of his body to the fingers thrusting in and out of his hole. I was struck by the sudden need to know what it felt like; to have the tight heat of his body around my own fingers.

I shifted closer to Thomas, laying a hand on one of his bent knees. I met his eyes and asked, “Can I?”

Thomas passed me the lube bottle wordlessly with his free hand. I squeezed some onto my fingers and settled between his legs. Thomas lifted the leg he’d braced on the bed and threw it over my shoulder. It gave me a better vantage, and was probably more comfortable for him, so instead of complaining about it I turned my head and pressed a kiss to the inside of his knee.

I looked down at where Thomas’s fingers had been working before. He had stilled now, but kept two fingers inside himself. I glanced at his face, asking permission one last time, then pressed one slicked finger in alongside two of his.

Thomas moaned when I pressed into him, and I did too. It was everything I’d imagined and more, tight and hot and slick. I moved in and out a few times, marveling in the feel of his inner walls rippling over me, the way his body gave way so easily. Thomas showed me with his two fingers how to crook mine to press against the spot that gave him the most pleasure. I could feel it, a slight bump against the inner wall, and when I rubbed the pad of my finger over it he moaned and rocked back against me.

Thomas removed another finger and I added a second, and he showed me how to thrust them in and out and spread them within his body to stretch him further. I thrilled at the thought that I was doing this alongside him, the feeling of his finger in there with mine. The idea that he was a willing and eager participant in his own debauchment was somehow incredibly erotic. I liked feeling that this was something we did together, rather than something I was doing to him.

But I didn’t voice that thought, and soon Thomas withdrew all of his fingers and used that arm to prop his head up so he could better watch what I was doing. I slipped a third finger into him, delighting in how easily it went it. I thrust my fingers into him a few times, rubbing over his sweet spot and drawing moans from his lips. I felt like I could gladly have done that for the rest of the night, but I also knew that I wasn’t going to last that long.

I was so close I could have come just from the sight of Thomas around my fingers, the feel of him rocking back against me, and so consumed with lust I could barely see straight. I turned my face against his thigh and closed my eyes. My head swam. I wanted to fuck him so badly, but I thought I might explode the moment I got inside.

“Harry,” Thomas said, his voice strangled in a way that didn’t sound pleasurable. I looked to him and saw his eyes flash silver briefly before going back to blue. My lust was making it harder for him to hold back the Hunger. If his control snapped, he could be seriously hurt. The sooner we broke the protection, the better; maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that I wasn’t going to last long.

The thought of hurting Thomas in itself was sufficient turn-off for me to rein in my lust and get myself under control. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, squeezing the base of my dick again to stave off orgasm. Easy, Harry, I told myself. Don’t blow this for both of you.

I opened my eyes and looked to Thomas once more. His eyes were dark and hazy blue, and he nodded to me. Whether it meant that he had the Hunger battered down again or was permission for me to move on, I wasn’t quite sure.

I withdrew my fingers from his body and started to reach for the night stand for a condom, but Thomas grabbed my hand. I frowned at him, confused. “You always use protection.”

“Because it makes other people more comfortable,” Thomas said, “and because I don’t want to get anyone pregnant. But I can’t catch anything, and I can’t give you something I haven’t caught.” He ran his thumb over the backs of my fingers, not meeting my eyes. “I don’t want anything between us.”

I swallowed and nodded, giving his hand a squeeze before pulling back. I grabbed the lube bottle from where it had fallen on the bed and squeezed some over my fingers to slick myself. I placed the tip of my erection at his entrance, waiting for Thomas’s nod before I began to push in. I closed my eyes and bit my lip as I sank into him, and heard Thomas moan. As good as he’d felt around my fingers, it was a thousand times better around my cock.

I pushed into him until I was fully seated, then leaned over his body to capture his lips. Thomas kissed me desperately. His legs gripped my waist and his hands tangled in my hair and smeared lube over my shoulders. I braced my left hand on the bed by his shoulder and used the right to caress his smooth skin. Then I rolled my hips, drawing out of him just a bit and then moving back in. “Harry,” Thomas gasped. “Yes.”

There’s something incredibly heady about hearing an incubus moan your name. I knew Thomas had probably been with more people than I’d ever said hello to, and I should have felt inexperienced and inadequate by comparison. But when my brother moaned my name and gazed up at me like that, like we were the only two people in the world, I knew I had nothing to worry about. “Thomas,” I answered him, and pressed my lips to his again.

It quickly became too difficult to sustain a kiss, both of us gasping for air as I thrust into his tight heat. I could hear my name mixed in with his moans of pleasure, and I felt the coil of need in my belly growing tighter. I didn’t try to stave it off anymore. Instead I trailed my right hand over my brother’s chest and down to where his cock lay trapped between our bodies. I wrapped my hand around him and started stroking at a fast pace that matched my erratic thrusts, hoping to bring him over the edge with me when I came. Thomas moaned into my shoulder, his hips stuttering as he tried to thrust into my fist and fuck back against my cock at the same time.

I couldn’t feel much with my left hand, but I saw Thomas shove his own hand beneath it and tangle his fingers with mine. I squeezed back as much as I was able. I wanted to say that I loved him. The words were on my tongue but I swallowed them down. If they were true, if I loved Thomas, then it would be Justine all over again. It wouldn’t matter if we broke my protection from Susan; he still wouldn’t be able to touch me. Instead I choked out, “Thomas, want you. Need you.” I heard him gasp my name and “yes” into my ear, felt his lips on my neck and that was it; I was gone.

A strangled sob escaped my throat as I came, thrusting erratically into Thomas’s body. Wave after arching wave of pleasure crashed through me. It was more intense than anything I’d ever felt. My hand stuttered and stilled on Thomas’s cock; I couldn’t concentrate enough to remember what to do with it. My legs and hips quickly followed and I sank down against him, trembling as I rode out the last aftershocks of pleasure.

A few moments later I had caught my breath, and became suddenly aware of the ragged movement of Thomas’s chest beneath mine, the still-hard outline of his cock in my loose fingers. I rolled part way off of him, my spent cock slipping from his body to a groan from both of us, and started stroking him again. I set a fast pace, twisting my wrist lazily and swiping my thumb over the tip and around the foreskin in the way he seemed to like. Thomas buried his face against my neck, moaning and panting against my skin. I kept that up for a few moments before he was coming apart in my arms, shuddering and gasping my name, and nothing had ever sounded so sweet to my ears. I stroked Thomas through his orgasm and down from it, savoring the little tremors of his body. It was only when he seemed to shy away from the touch, overstimulated, that I finally let go of him and smoothed my sticky hand over his hip.

Thomas took a moment to catch his breath, seeming content just to lie against me while we both remembered how to breathe. Then, wrapping an arm around me he rolled us both onto our sides, so I wasn’t on top of him any longer. Thomas breathed a contented sigh and drew me closer with the arm around my waist. When he opened his eyes, I saw that they’d gone back to their familiar storm cloud grey. I leaned in and kissed him, something sweet and chaste compared to what we’d done earlier, and took a moment just to marvel at the fact that I was able to do these things with him, and hold him like this in the aftermath.

But there was still a concern weighing heavily on my mind, and it kept me from relaxing completely. I shifted against Thomas, and he met my eyes in silent question.

“Did it work?” I asked quietly.

Thomas cocked an eyebrow. “Harry, if you’re not sure if that worked I think we’ve got other issues to deal with.”

I rolled my eyes and gave his shoulder a light shove, feeling my face heat up. “I meant, is the protection broken? Can you feed off of me without getting burned?”

Thomas blinked in surprise, then furrowed his brows in a look of concentration. I felt the slight tugging feeling in my stomach that I remembered from the last time he’d fed off of me. No screams from Thomas; no hiss of skin being burnt, and the arm around my waist wasn’t snatched away. I saw a mark I’d bitten and sucked into his shoulder fade away to nothing. Thomas’s eyes focused on mine once more. “It’s broken,” he murmured. “Though I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.”

“Of course it is,” I said. “I don’t want to run the risk of hurting you every time we sleep together.” Thomas averted his eyes. I knew he was probably thinking that now I would be the one at risk.

My right hand was trapped against the mattress, so I had to lift my burnt and unfeeling left hand to brush against his cheek. “You said you’d trust my judgement on this. Trust me when I say that I know you, and I know you’re not capable of hurting someone you love.” I knew it was dangerous to say that word, but I also knew it was true, in one sense or another. If nothing else, we were brothers.

I could see the wheels turning in his head, and I knew Thomas was probably trying to think of some way to deny what I’d said. At last he shook his head and said, “Never mind. I don’t want to argue right now.”

I laughed softly. “Neither do I,” I said. Then I curled my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him close to kiss him. Thomas kissed back with none of the urgency he’d had before. It was warm, soft, languid. I felt sleep pulling me down and vaguely wondered if we should make an effort to clean ourselves up before our seed dried on our skin. But I couldn’t actually make myself say it, with Thomas lying warm and pliant in my arms and kissing me lazily. We could take care of that in the morning.

We lay together on my little bed, just touching one another and basking in the afterglow. It still seemed too good to be true, even though I could feel the evidence of what we’d done between our bodies. I looked into my brother’s face and felt my heart thrill with joy. I’d been so afraid and so ashamed for so long, and I knew Thomas had too. Maybe we didn’t have everything worked out, but we both knew how the other felt. It was mutual; it was real. We didn’t have to fear being found out, or feel ashamed of our selfish desires. We had learned each other’s secrets, and it hadn’t been easy but it had brought us closer together. We had each other, in ways that both of us had thought we’d only dream of. I, for one, never intended to let go.

I saw Thomas’s eyes blink closed, heard and felt his breath even out in sleep, and I smiled. He rarely allowed himself to be physically close with anyone, besides what was necessary for feeding. Yet now Thomas was curled against me, his arm wrapped around my body. I was sure he never slept like this with any of his dates. It felt good to have this tender, open side of him that was only for me.

I pressed a kiss to my brother’s cheek and lay my head down beside his. I gazed at his peaceful face and thought that I could get used to falling asleep next to Thomas like this. I listened to his steady breathing and felt my eyes grow heavy. My last thought before succumbing to sleep was that I’d have to return the sculpture to Murphy tomorrow.

 

 


End file.
